A new meeting room has opened in downtown Fremont.
The Chef’s Room opened Nov. 1 as part of J’s Steakhouse in the Kollmeyer Building at the corner of Main and Fourth streets, and Jay Siers said this new meeting room was badly needed. Earlier in the fall, an Omaha pharmaceutical company had brought in local physicians and other medical professionals to present a program about new drugs that were just on the market, said Siers, who owns J’s Steakhouse with his wife, Michele.
The program had to be held in the restaurant’s dining room with other restaurant customers, he said. A company representative projected images on the restaurant wall.
“That was not a good situation,” Siers said. “That’s when we started thinking about a separate meeting room. We first thought about putting it on the second floor of the building, but it was not cost effective.”
Siers said he was able to convince the building’s owners, who also own the Kollmeyer’s gift shop, to relocate the shop’s framing section downstairs so the area across the foyer from the restaurant’s dining room could house the new meeting and banquet room.
“We didn’t have to do that much to the room to get it ready,” he said. “We’ve got a nice facility now.”
People are already starting to take note.
“The room is about 80 percent booked up through January. The fact that this corresponds with the holiday season is a bonus. We have a lot of Christmas parties scheduled. Weekend nights always go first. But we have other nights scheduled as well. Just in December, we have 17 parties booked.”
The Chef’s Room is equipment with an audio-video system that includes wireless Internet, speaker system, microphone, digital projector, screen and port for someone to plug in a laptop computer to show a program.
Bill Perry, whose family owns the building, said they were happy to move the frame shop to make the space available.
“This is a great asset to downtown,” Perry said.
After the frame shop equipment was moved out, the room just had to be painted and have furnishings moved in, Siers said.
“The room was ready,” he said. “It had plumbing and electrical outlets. It made a natural location.”
The location across the foyer from J’s Steakhouse dining room was a better location than the second floor of the Kollmeyer Building also because of the time it would take to add the plumbing and electrical outlets needed for a meeting room.
“The time frame and the cost associated with all of that work made going across the hall the best option for us,” Siers said.
In addition to the number of Christmas parties and other corporate functions already scheduled for The Chef’s Room, Siers said they have rehearsal dinners scheduled into October 2009.
“Fremont really needed something like this,” he said. “It’s been really well received. I don’t think the location means as much as having a high quality place to hold private functions.
“Having said that, I don’t take away from the fact that we love being downtown. If we had to do it over, we wouldn’t do anything of it differently. We’d be in the same place on the same corner.”
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