The huge, mid-century sign for Coachman’s Dinner & Pancake House, now standing alone on the site of the demolished Salt Lake City restaurant, has so far been saved from the same fate.

Now, the task is to take it down safely and store it somewhere without damaging it.

To make that happen, the Liberty Wells Community Council — which is spearheading the effort to save the sign, working with Preservation Utah — is turning to the community.

This week, the council launched a GoFundMe campaign in the hopes of raising enough money to pay Yesco, the Salt Lake City company that made the sign, to remove it.

The council hopes to raise about $10,000, but is setting smaller “benchmark” goals along the way. As of Thursday afternoon, the campaign had raised $1,828, with a benchmark goal to raise $3,000.

Margaret Coppin, chair of the Liberty Wells Community Council, said the council would also match some of the donations with its own funds.

Coppin said the Coachman’s sign is a “landmark,” one that designates the entrance to the Liberty Wells neighborhood.

Brandy Strand, executive director of Preservation Utah, said, “When you start telling or asking people about the Coachman’s sign, they start telling you about how they went there with their grandpa, and they remember having family dinners there, and they have really close memories that help them not only identify as an individual but as a part of a community.”

Removing the 30-foot-wide sign won’t be easy.

Built in 1959 and created by the original owner of Coachman’s, Nick N. Nikols Nikolaos Nikiforos Nikolakakis, the sign has “a lot of very delicate parts, and it’s huge,” Coppin said, “so it’s going to take multiple days to dismantle it and safely pack it up, so that we don’t cause any damage to it.”

Stephen Robinson, a service specialist for Yesco, said the preliminary strategy is to remove the lantern atop the sign, then potentially separate the white portion that says “Coachman’s” from the brown section that says “Dinner & Pancake House.”

Robinson said it’s necessary to try to separate the two main parts to cut down on weight, because once the sign comes to the ground, “gravity is going to finally take action.”

However, if separating the white and brown sections will ruin the sign, Robinson said, the company would try another strategy.

Robinson said Yesco plans to insert a metal structure into the sign so it doesn’t “crush itself” once it’s in storage.

Once the sign comes down, it will have a safe place to stay until it has a new home.

Brandon Blaser, founder and president of Blaser Ventures, offered to store the Coachman’s sign in a building awaiting redevelopment in the Granary District.

His development firm has been behind projects like the Pickle & Hide property in the Granary District, and Granary Square, which will be between Granary Live and Kilby Court, as well as other mixed-use and adaptive reuse projects throughout the Salt Lake Valley, including the Post District and the Silos.

“We’ve got a space that we’ll be able to keep the Coachman’s sign for at least the next probably 12 to 18 months, free of charge,” Blaser said. “We’ll keep it for as long as we can until they find a place within the community where [the sign] can find an appropriate new home.”

Blaser said offering the space to store the Coachman’s sign is part of being a good “community partner.”

As much of Salt Lake City is redeveloped, Blaser said, “we all need to be working together to try to ensure we keep as much of the old as we bring on the new.”

The Liberty Wells Community Council’s fundraiser will run through the end of July. Coppin said that’s the deadline set by Sapa Investment Group, which plans to redevelop the corner where Coachman’s restaurant once stood at State Street and 1300 South.

When asked what would happen to the sign if the necessary funds can’t be raised, Sapa Investment Group managing partner and state lawmaker Hoang Nguyen said, “We would regroup at that point to decide how we would proceed.”