Terre Haute House - Numerous Attempts at Revival Fail, But Not For A Lack of Trying

Numerous Attempts At Revival Fail, But Not For A Lack of Trying

In the 35 years between the Terre Haute House's closing and the start of demolition, numerous developers — along with at least two Terre Haute mayors — advanced plans to either renovate and reopen the hotel or demolish it and redevelop the land. Much to the chagrin of local residents, nothing ever got off the ground, and some residents and, most notably, a number of city officials eventually came to see the dilapidated hotel as the ultimate symbol of downtown Terre Haute's stagnation.

In March 1984, then-Terre Haute mayor P. Pete Chalos threatened to condemn the hotel property in an attempt to force the Hulman family into selling it. This didn't work, but it did seem to spur interest among developers, who began working in earnest to put plans together to restore and reopen the old hotel.

Over the decade that followed Chalos' threat, redevelopment plans were advanced and then withdrawn, in what seemed to be a perpetual cycle of hopes raised and then dashed. Perhaps the most serious proposal was offered in the mid-1990s. At Chalos' urging, the Walden Group, led by Texas developer Don Daseke, who had developed an attractive hotel on the campus of Depauw University in Greencastle, Indiana, put together what was, by most accounts, a very attractive package that would have returned the Terre Haute House to its original use as a luxury hotel, making it a convention destination under the Radisson banner.

Daseke managed to sign a purchase agreement with the Hulman family for the hotel in the summer of 1995, and Radisson signed on early the next year. All of his plans were contingent upon financing, however. Despite the fact local banks in Terre Haute were not and could not be convinced that it would work, they had reached the point where they had essentially decided to give a green light to the project, fully expecting that Daske would end up filing bankruptcy and, perhaps, the subsequent operator, before the operation would stabilize. One board member of one of the biggest banks involved, however, insisted that the underwriting requirements be imposed that Daseke would later call “onerous.” Daseke pulled out of the project in January 1997, citing the banks' intractability.

The board member who changed the course of the Daseke project was none other than Greg Gibson, whose family, at the time, owned the only full service hotel in the downtown area, the Larry Bird's "Boston Connection" (which is now a Days Inn with no connection to Bird). Terre Haute First National Bank had decided, despite some reservations, to fund the Daseke project. When bank board member Gibson learned of the bank's intention he successfully blocked it to protect his interest in the Boston Connection.

Another group of potential investors, with Daseke on board, then turned to a proposal that would have converted the hotel into senior citizen housing. This, too, fell by the wayside.

Later that year, in an interview with the Tribune-Star for a special series of articles on the Hulman family, Tony George, Tony Hulman's grandson and the face of today's Hulman family empire, damned the Terre Haute House with faint praise while basically reiterating the family's indifference toward the old hotel. “I think architecturally it's significant, historically it's significant and it would be really nice to see it somehow evolve to be part of the downtown again,” he said. “I just don't think that we are in any position to develop it ourselves, given everything else that's going on. If no one develops it, we'll probably demolish it.”

In 2002, following Toney George’s pronouncement regarding his general disinterest in the Terre Haute House John R. Bischoff met with Hulman officials Jeff Belskus, Curt Brighton and Fred Nation and convinced them to consider one last effort to renovate the property.

Bischoff, along with local attorney C. Joseph Anderson and Charles Faust of Summit Hotel Management formed Haute Maison Development LLC for that purpose.

Haute Maison struck a deal with Marriot Corporation. HNTB became the architect of record and F. A. Wilhelm was selected to renovate the structure.

Complicating effort to fund the project was the fact that Mayor Judy Anderson, in office at the beginning of Haute Maison’s effort, was sister-in-law of Haute Maison partner C. Joseph Anderson.

Anderson was already under attack for choosing one of her sons to serve as her administrative assistant and for granting another son a city sidewalk contract. Many political observers believe such decisions significantly contributed to her defeat by Kevin Burke in the May 2003 mayoral primary.

By the time Burke took office Haute Maison had secured the necessary funding commitments in the form of syndication of Historic Tax Credits, New Markets Tax Credits and certain state credits. Essentially all funding, including the mortgage funding was to come from out of town sources.

Bischoff and Anderson met with Burke, not to obtain any form of city financial support, but to ask him to refrain from seeking to block their effort. In response, Burke later attended an Urban Enterprise Association meeting in which he warned the membership against providing the project $250,000 in assistance it had promised the developers.

Later a legal representative of the developer’s New Market Tax Credit funding source came to town simply to determine that the city was receptive to the development. Burke, through his representative successfully soured the representative on investment in the city. He had many other cities seeking such investment and willing to contribute their fair share.

Burke successfully blocked all other efforts to renovate the building by convincing the buildings owners to allow the city to take control and create and publish a request for proposals for the structure.

Attorneys for both building owner and the city drafted the RFP. The RFP specified that no city assistance would be provided and $1,000,000 in assistance previously promised to prospective developers by the property owner would not now be available.

All responses to the RFP were rejected and the project and several million dollars in public assistance and unspecified incentives provided by the property owner were made available to Greg Gibson, who did not present a proposal in response to the RFP.

When Kevin Burke was elected mayor of Terre Haute in 2003, he promised to decide the issue once and for all — Burke's campaign platform had included tearing down the Terre Haute House from the early days of his mayoral run. Once elected, Burke's administration obtained an option to purchase the property from the Hulman family in October 2004.

In January 2005, the city's Department of Redevelopment put out a request for proposals for rehabilitating the old hotel and other historic buildings on the property or redeveloping the site. On May 25, 2005, the committee overseeing the process announced that none of the four rehab proposals met the city's stated financial criteria and thus the project was back at square one once again. The city's purchase option expired the following month, leaving the hotel's future once again in limbo.