PT Grillers to open events center at former Jack and Arnie's building

After 14 years in the catering business, Paul Cooley and Tom McLean—better known as the PT Grillers—are taking the next step, as they have purchased the former home of Jack and Arnie’s Steakhouse and are renovating it with plans to open a private events center next month.
           
The duo now known as the PT Grillers sprung out of an impromptu idea to host a hog roast during Morrison’s sesquicentennial celebration in 2003, and it has continued to grow: McLean and Cooley are now a fixture at both Felix Grundy Days and the Reinbeck Fourth of July celebration. They cater weddings, parties and other events with hefty helpings of meat and about any side dish you can think of, and word of the operation just kept spreading: before long, they were doing around 100 events a year.
           
The building—located about a mile north of the Oak Leaf Golf Course on county highway T55—is something of a landmark in Grundy County: built in the early 1900s, it was a landing strip for small planes, and it then became the Skyway Restaurant for the better part of 60 years. Around the turn of the century, Jack and Arnie’s, which also owns a steakhouse in Janesville, took over, before closing in June of last year. Cooley, who also runs Cooley Sanitation and Pumping, and McLean, who operates the Morris Inn, had been looking to expand their hobby-turned-business, but it took some convincing on the location.
 
Read more in this week's Grundy Register.