Terre Haute House - Could This Hotel Have Been Saved?

Could This Hotel Have Been Saved?

The hotel's location in sleepy downtown Terre Haute, coupled with the deterioration of the old building, gave many local government and business community pause when considering proposals to restore the landmark hotel. As restoration cost estimates continued to climb over the years, the willingness of the Terre Haute House's owners (the Hulman family) to work with would-be restorers faded.

And while its façade was beginning to crumble, the structure of the Terre Haute House itself seems to have been very sound. The concrete and steel superstructure would have lent themselves well to restoration and upgrading, but with many interior surfaces damaged by decades of water infiltration, any such effort would have been a costly proposition.

In addition to the damage brought on by the water infiltration, other factors would surely have inflated the cost of any restoration. Recall that the hotel was built more than 75 years ago. In the three-quarters of a century since that time, construction, plumbing and electrical codes have been updated many times over. Also, the Americans with Disabilities Act requires certain accessibility provisions be made for those with physical limitations.

The ADA requirements alone would have proven difficult to satisfy, given the hotel's general layout. Add to that the fact that any one of the other demands of compliance with the various building codes would have pushed the price of restoration significantly higher, and it becomes somewhat easier to understand why the hotel was not restored.

In the end, though, political pressure to demolish the old hotel - which was dubbed by Mayor Burke in 2003 “an impediment to downtown revitalization” — ultimately proved to be the final blow for the Terre Haute House. Although reuse advocates still maintain that the 1927 Terre Haute House was a great candidate for restoration (despite the cost), each swing of the 6,000-pound wrecking ball that reduced the landmark to rubble in the winter of 2005 punctuated the decision of local government and business leaders to close the door forever on that possibility.

In the very same year Terre Haute officials chose to demolish the city’s landmark hotel, the city fathers of Oklahoma City decided to save theirs. The Skirvin Hotel, built in downtown Oklahoma City in 1910, in 1988 succumbed to the same societal changes and resulting economic realities that closed the Terre Haute House for good.

Developers spent $56.4 million to reopen the Skirvin as a 225-room hotel. About $18 million of the funding came in the form of public assistance.

Various developers in Terre Haute came forth with proposals to renovate its famous hotel. These developers sought only $1,000,000 in assistance, either from the public sector or the Hulman family, which had in the past pledged that much to such a project. One such proposal estimated renovation costs at $20,000,000 to reopen the structure as a 138-unit Marriot by Courtyard.

Terre Haute officials published its Request for Proposals on October 14, 2004, but withheld all forms of public support for any project involving renovation of the existing structure.

There is no real question as to whether the project could have been funded, or if the old hotel could have been restored to become one of the finest hotels in the state. Given essentially the same circumstances Oklahoma did it. Terre Haute officials simply failed to understand the value in doing the right thing.