A senior housing proposal

If I am presented a $10 to $14 million dollar proposal, it better look like a $10 to $14 million dollar proposal.

On December 14, the Finney County Preservation Alliance met to hear Vogel Properties proposal to turn the Windsor Hotel into a senior living facility – while taking advantage of low income senior housing tax credits.  The members of Downtown Vision along with several other community members joined us.  After tinkering with the computer and projector, the potential investors apologized for technical difficulties.  The PowerPoint proposal did not work and the group had no backup.  Lucky for them, one my fellow Alliance board members had printed off the PowerPoint presentation in advance, so that everyone would have a lap copy.

Titled “Restoring The Windsor Hotel,” the PowerPoint packet featured a 1907 historic photograph of the Windsor Hotel, taken by F.M. Steele Photography.  Owned by the Finney County Historical Society, no permission had been asked to use the photo.  Thumbing through the packet, I realized that all the photos had been pulled from the Windsor Hotel’s Facebook page or website, without permission.  Some of the photographs were copyrighted.  Some were taken with my Canon Rebel, on my time.

The first page (containing text content) of the proposal was titled “Unique Plan” and contained the following bulleted list:

• Coordinate Site Control
• Collaborate to ensure historical preservation while creating mixed-use tenancy that generates revenue stream to preserve the Windsor in perpetuity.
• Prepare and submit applications for financing in early 2012
• Upon an award of financing, commence $10MM to $14 MM Windsor redevelopment.
• Renovation complete and occupy by 2013.

For the most part, that was the proposal.  Of course, the group verbally expanded on each bullet, but still, I expected details and an itemized budget.  Potential blueprints failed to bait my endorsement.  Proposed blueprints were the current Windsor Hotel floor plans—pulled off the Windsor website—with large colored boxes to act as floor dividers.  The ground floor included 6,000 square feet of office space and 9,000 square feet for meeting/banquet space and a restaurant OR retail space.  As there is a need for fine dining on Main Street, a potential restaurant is a good selling point.  However, the presence of the “or” retail space hints that the Alliance is only being humored.  Restaurants are a messy business as compared to retail/office space.  Additional office space would provide guaranteed rent, and would be less likely to go out of business.

One of my goals with the Windsor Hotel has been to insure that the ground floor will offer retail shopping and fine dining.  I personally have no interest in proposals that include offices directly off the sidewalk.  Main Street is slowly being infested by offices as it is.

“Every time an office space opens on Main Street, that hurts business,” I said, after presenting the fact that I manage the art gallery down the street.  My concern was supported by another Main Street business owner.  In response, the potential investors’ consultant expressed that renovated space could house offices at first, but could house retail space after five years.  I raised an eyebrow.  If the Garden City Chamber of Commerce moves into the Windsor Hotel, they are not going to move out in five years because someone wants to open up an old-fashioned candy store.  Once offices move in, they will never move out.

The proposed second floor plan proved more devastating than the first.  Three apartments are planned to occupy the old dining room, which would have the potential to provide the most grand banquet area in Garden City.  Stairs and an elevator will take the place of John Stevens’ bedroom.  The Stevens’ sitting room, along with what was once the private entrance into the opera house and the Stevens’ children’s bedroom are to be merged into a large “amenities” room.  Remaining space on the second floor will be used for additional offices and a “Heritage Community Museum & Meeting Area.”

Third and fourth floors, which have 43 hotel rooms each, are to be gutted and replaced with ten apartments on each floor.  Wall after wall will be torn down to create “studio” apartments, which could be better described as awkward long hallways, complete with kitchen and bath.  Photos of similar project and previous work from the group foretell that historic charm will be washed away.  All the mahogany woodworking in the hotel rooms will be sacrificed to make room for faux wood molding.  And so the Windsor Hotel will be turned into a stamp, like an industrial chain – McDonalds and Taco Bell.

Granite countertops seemed to be the selling point.  I lost count how many times the phrase was thrown into the proposal.  It was as if the adults on Charlie Brown had learned a new word: “Wah wah granite wah woh granite wah wah woh granite wah.” Personally, I would prefer 125-year-old foot-high mahogany woodworking over granite countertops.  But hey, at least the atrium will be preserved and open to the public, hopefully.

“What if residents demand that public access is closed off?” I asked.

“Don’t live there,” the group consultant replied with a shrug.

Fearing that tax credits may be cut in 2012, the potential investors said they needed a decision “yesterday” of whether or not we would accept the proposal.  Tax credit applications are due February 3.  Such short notice guarantees that no other proposals can be considered.  How convenient.

As the proposal wrapped up, the Alliance president expressed that $14 million would be a good investment downtown.  That depends on what one considers an investment.

After the meeting, I found myself walking under the lighted Christmas trees along Main Street. There was no one else around, except for the small audience exiting Downtown Vision.  No one.  Main Street nightlife depends on the proper restoration of the Windsor Hotel.  Senior housing, in my opinion, will not offer an investment, but rather a 30-year curse.  As a tax credit project, nothing else can be done with the building for three decades.

Request for Walls

Reaching for the phone, I pressed the “talk” button and greeted my unknown caller with my broken-record hello: “Garden City Arts.”

“Brian.  It’s Don.  Can you keep a secret?”

Several weeks prior, Don and I had submitted a grant to the Lois Kay Walls Foundation in Wichita requesting $30,000 to restore the Windsor Hotel tower and $150,000 to restore the lobby.  The suggestion to submit the grant had been through fellow Windsor Hotel supporter, Karin.  I first met Karin when she hired me to photograph her mother’s 100^th birthday bash.  While capturing Grams’ big day, Ms. Karin and I discovered that we, along with her husband, Richard, were all alumni from the same small college in Winfield, Kansas.

Though the birthday cake is long gone, Karin and I continue to cross one another’s trail of bread crumbs.  Last spring I booked a 24-hour train ride toward Disneyland to visit my sister.  Upon arrival at the Garden City train depot, I sat my duffle down and approached the ticket counter.  As I stepped into the waiting line, a woman turned around.  It was Karin.  She and Richard were on their way to Arizona.  Together we departed the platform at 6:21 a.m.  While I spent the majority of the journey west with the Baudelaire Orphans and some rather unfortunate events, I did manage to bag my books, for a while, and explore Albuquerque with my two traveling companions.  We parted ways in Flagstaff.  More recently—after Don’s “secret” call to the art gallery—I met up with Karin and her husband again at the museum during the opening of my most recent exhibit, “Rangers & Grangers, Settling Up Southwest Kansas.”

“Have you been out to California lately?” Karin asked.

“Not since March,” I said.  I then brought up the grant.  She smiled.  Karin had been childhood friends with Kay Walls and had presented our grant to the Lois Kay Walls Foundation in person.

“He knows our secret,” Karin said to Richard as he approached us and shook my hand.

“I helped write the grant,” I said.

Don wrote the majority of the grant and then e-mailed it my way.  Having recently attended Gina Tyler’s grant writing workshop in Liberal, I was eager to “unlearn what I had learned” as a wise Jedi once said.  Grant writer Gina Tyler had expressed the importance to include anything that would help secure the grant and to research the source as much as possible.  So, I googled the Lois Kay Wall Foundation.  The result: a mailing address.  No website, no information.  I was at a loss.  We needed more muscle for our grant.  The namesake of the foundation had roots in Garden City—or at least fruits and vegetables.  The Garden City Walls IGA opened in 1951 on the corner of Sixth Street and Laurel Street.  It caught fire when I was a toddler.  The long-time business was sure to have a history.  Lucky for me, I have a key to Garden City’s history.

There are seven large file cabinets containing the vertical history of Finney County at the Historical Museum.  I was in need of the Walls family folder, which I discovered sandwiched in between WALLER, JAMES THOMAS and WALTER, CHARLES.

WALLS, J.C. contained enough documents to pass for a short novel, including letters, obituaries, family trees and newspaper articles.  One article, dated Friday June 22, 1951 was announcing the Walls’ IGA grocery store grand opening the upcoming Sunday.  It was praised to be the “most modern independent food department store in Kansas” with speedy checkouts and even a public address intercom.  As interesting as the Independent Grocers Alliance of America was, I had doubts the information would help us acquire a grant—even if the organization does date back to1925.

Then I came across a more recent article: Kay Walls’ mother’s obituary:

“Nettie Kaye Jane (Wolley) Walls aged 99, passed away January 23, 2007 at Larksfield Place in Wichita, Kansas.  She was born August 26, 1907 six miles north of Medoc, KS.  Her mother was Minnie Wilhemina (Sebert) Wolley and her father was Charles Seth Wolley.  She married Henry Briggs Walls March 17, 1929…”

Briggs.

Earlier in the year I had entered the Windsor with a photograph of a Windsor Hotel manager’s living quarters, in hopes to identify where the photo had been taken.  While I could not confirm the room location, I was yet to forget the manager’s name: Mr. Briggs.  If this was the same Briggs family, then the Walls had a direct connection with the Windsor Hotel.  I created a web from the folder’s contents and dug into several other folders to confirm my suspicion.

Lois Kay Walls was the daughter of Nettie Kaye Jane (Wolley) and Henry Briggs Walls, who moved to Garden City shortly after their marriage on March 17, 1929.  They operated the Walls IGA Grocery Store for many years and eventually bought and operated the Garden City Dillons Supermarket.   Henry’s father, Joseph C. Walls, was the founder of the local J.C. Walls grocery business.  He came to the area in 1899 and soon began managing the men’s shoe and dress goods departments at the George Inge Dry Goods Co., which was located on the ground floor of the Windsor Hotel.  By 1907, he was managing the hotel, but only for a short while.  The same cannot be said for his brother-in-law C.E. ‘Doc’ Briggs (Kay Walls’ granduncle and the same Mr. Briggs who I was already familiar with).  Doc Briggs acquired management of the Windsor Hotel in 1895 and eventual ownership.  He continued operation of the building, on and off, through 1930.  Briggs had a third brother George, who lived in Kansas City and would spend four weeks out of each year in Garden City, using the Windsor Hotel as his headquarters.  There he attracted men’s apparel owners from all over Kansas twice a year for a showing of men’s hats.  The Briggs brothers were often reported in local newspapers as active community members and dedicated fans to the Windsor Hotel.  As Lois Kay Walls was of direct lineage of these men, the Windsor Hotel most likely played a part in her life as well.  Relations between the Briggs/Walls and the Windsor Hotel offered an ideal connection to acquire at least a portion of the grant we were to request.  Restoration of the hotel tower for $30,000 would be ideal.

Funding for the tower would allow us to repair supporting rafters in the structure, which has served as a large pigeon birdhouse for the last thirty years.  Weather, water and bird bombs have degraded the four-sided structure, standing as a decorative crown to the hotel, reminiscent in design of a captain’s walk from earlier times.  Originally, a wooden flagpole stood as a lookout atop the tower.  Efforts took two men and a boy to run the American Flag up to its height of fifteen feet.  With the grant, the flag could fly once more, while also restoring the region’s skyline.

The additional $150,000 for lobby restoration was an unlikely addition, but worth attempting.  We had failed to acquire a $50,000 grant during the Pepsi Refresh Project in July.  This was our next chance to restore the hotel lobby, which no longer reflects the original.  Once upon a time the original facade featured stained glass windows and two entrances in the lobby.  The main entrance stood directly under the tower, the second provided a direct exit from the grand staircase.  The grand staircase was constructed of solid mahogany wood and was six feet wide.  Meeting the same fate as characters in Don Siegel’s “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” the grand staircase vanished, only to be replaced by a lifeless shell of a dark u-shaped stairwell.

Additionally, the eighteen-foot ceiling was cut in half by constructing a mezzanine in between the first two floors.  When the hotel closed, the two entrances were removed and replaced with windows, leaving no direct entry into the lobby.  But the largest devastation—at least for the Windsor’s original architects, J.H. Stevens and C.L. Thompson—was the horrific 1970s addition of a glittery popcorn ceiling.  Stevens and Thompson would question the grandeur of a ceiling that crumbles upon mere touch and then attracts directly to the human eye as if magnetic.  Such a disaster is beyond words, and is sure to leave even Herbert Morrison speechless.  Yet, a fully-funded grant would be able to reverse the alterations of time.  With the renovation of the lobby, a welcome center would be established and allow authentic access into the hotel for tours.  From there, the Windsor Hotel restoration project could continue to snowball until completion.

We submitted the grant.  I heard nothing more until the Alliance president called me at work.

“Brian.  It’s Don.  Can you keep a secret?”

Soon after, an article was published on October 28 in the Garden City Telegram.  Next to a photo I had taken myself, was the feature headline: Windsor gets $180k.

Jere’s Tour

September 7, 2011 greeted me with a letter.  It came to the Windsor Hotel’s inbox, which I, for the most part, solely check.  Not addressed to myself, gave me all the more reason to read:

Dear Mr. Harness,

I am writing to ask you for a personal favor.  I live in Fayetteville, NC, but was born in Garden City in 1944.  My husband and I are planning to possibly visit Garden City sometime in the week after Sept 18.

I would like to be able to have a tour and take some photos of the Windsor Hotel when I visit.  I’ll tell you why….

Jere and her husband reached the top of the stairs with their back to the grand atrium.  She turned first.  What she saw was something from a story—a fairytale she had requested over and over again during her six decades of life.  Before her she saw the winding staircases and balconies where the story took place.  This was it.  With a slight gasp she reached for her husband’s hand.  He turned at her touch.

My mother has passed away, but my father is now 91 and living in Muskogee, OK.  They were married over 60 years.  The Windsor Hotel played a big part in their lives….they fell in love there.  He still speaks of it often.

The year was 1943.  Jere’s father was a single Warrant Officer in the Army Air Corps stationed at the local air base.  Her mother was a single civilian secretary on the base.  She, Dorris, was a beautiful woman, so much, that she kept a “date book” for her many beaus.  But of course the man who would win in the end, always asked too late.  When asked to accompany him to a formal ball at the Windsor Hotel, she gave the usual answer.  She had already given her word to another man on the air base.  Determined, Jere’s father, Jess, made arrangements of his own.  Secretly, Jess arranged one of his buddies—who was a medic—to put quarantine on the unfortunate date’s whole barrack.  When Dorris’ escort failed to appear she was offered another hand, Jess’.  It was in the Windsor Hotel under the stars of the vaulted glass ceiling that the couple started a story of their own.  They married three months later.

After Jere’s birth, they moved.  The Windsor Hotel became legend.  For their children, it was a far away place—beyond the moon, beyond the rain.

Of all the tours I have given, Jere’s was different.  I cannot say why it was different, but there was something in her eyes that told me so.  Maybe for most, the Windsor Hotel is nothing more than an impressive work of 1887 architecture.  But for Jere, there’s something more.  Her parents were here.  They are here.  Their story dances within the walls.

As we walked the halls, Jere asked the one question I always dread: “What do you plan to do with the Windsor Hotel?”

I hesitated.  “Current plans are to turn the Windsor into an office incubator,” I said.

Jere’s face fell.  “Oh, no…” she whispered, wounded by the words.

I began to advance down the stairs from the third floor and then halted.  I gripped the dusty banister and turned back to Jere and her husband.  “But my vision,” I continued, “Is to restore it back into a hotel.  That’s why I joined the board.”

The Windsor Hotel has never been anything, but a hotel.  It should never stand as anything else.  It was never meant to.  There are several other old hotel buildings on Main Street.  Each one has found new life, but not as a hotel, and that’s ok.  The Windsor, however, deserves more.  If refurbished into an office incubator, time will only repeat itself.  As decades pass, the Windsor Hotel will fall into despair, again.  But if restored properly back into a hotel, it will be cherished, not only by Garden City, but all those who travel through here—for all time.

September 19, 2011

Brian,

Thank you so much again for taking part of your day to show us around.  We really did enjoy it.  I can tell you are truly dedicated to helping to preserve a part of this country’s past, and I thank you.  I hope that the Preservation Alliance continues to receive funds to restore the Windsor.  It will be beautiful.

Garden City, Kansas 1943

Gone Fishing

Dumpster diving is not my sport.  But when I leaned out one of the old dining room windows during a tour and saw what had been abandoned in the dumpster below, I knew I would be rolling up my sleeves.

Josh, a passing-through truck driver, was my tourist that day.

“We ask for a $5 donation per tour,” I informed Josh as he made a note in the guestbook that he was from Omaha, Nebraska.

He reached into a front pocket of his over-tight Levi’s and struggled to pull his hand back out.  Once it emerged he presented two crumbled bills.  A $20 and $1 bill.

“That’s all I got,” he said.

I thought $21 was a generous donation for a single tour.  As I reached out my hand, he stuffed the $20 bill back into his pocket and handed me the single dollar.  After starring at the lone dollar for a moment, as if expecting it to multiply, I began to wonder why I never had change to break larger bills during tours.

“Your donation will benefit the Windsor Hotel,” I said out of habit, while awkwardly tucking the bill into my back pocket.

We advanced through the ground floor and I pointed out the current work going on in the Windsor Hotel.

“All the shoring work here has just been put up,” I said.  “Our contractors have also been removing the false ceiling here so that we can see the original seventeen-foot-high ceiling.”

As this was my first tour since construction started, I had a few new details to include in the tour.  Some of the original entrance tile had been uncovered by our contractors.  Dozens of small white heptagon tiles were found accented by peal-green square tiles representing a chain link with red boarder tiles sandwiching the green.  The tile made me wonder what else was hidden within the hotel, or rather the community.  Recently, the president of the Alliance informed me that someone has one of the original Windsor Hotel doorways.  Its fifteen feet tall.  Located in the stranger’s yard, it has a tree growing through it.  I have high hopes the unusual yard decor will be donated back to the Windsor Hotel.

Continuing our tour up in the hotel, I found myself having to detour my usual route.  There was now shoring in the men’s parlor, the Presidential Suite and the dining room.  The dining room also had an unusual amount of light entering it.  Usually the only light in the dining room stretched from the court skylights.  This light came from one of the back windows, which had been boarded up for years.  Fresh air was now gushing through the unusual opening, as if the hotel was finally allowed a gasp of air, after years of suffocation.  We approached the portal, which had been uncovered so that the contractors could toss ceiling plaster into the commercial dumpster below.  I stuck my head out the window and noticed plaster was not the only thing lounging in the dumpster.

“Those aren’t suppose to be down there,” I said, breaking away from my tour script.

“Wha?” Josh asked.

I pointed down into the dumpster.

“Those doors?” he asked.

“Saloon doors,” I said.  “Looks like I’m going fishing.”

We finished the tour, shook hands and parted.  As Josh walked down the sidewalk, I headed to the trunk of my car.  Pulling my keys out, I popped the trunk and pulled out a pair of leather gloves.  I made my way to the alley.  The dumpster was at least eight feet tall.  I climbed, straddled onto the side and then submerged myself into dust and broken plaster.  Fifteen minutes later I was accompanied with two saloon doors on my way back to the front of the hotel.  As I rounded the corner, I came across three gentlemen outside of Regan’s Real Estate—the Windsor Hotel’s neighbor.

The men need not say a word.  There eyes said everything: “What you been into boy?”

“Been swimming,” I grinned, pulling the doors a little higher to cover my dusty tie.

Back inside the hotel, I leaned the doors against a wall near the pile of artifacts that had recently been pulled out from under the floor.  What would have been considered junk by Bob Sagot’s version of Danny Tanner, included an old tin coffee pot and a shoe.  Just one shoe, as if during the hotel’s construction, a worker lost his shoe from a high location in the hotel above, before all the floors were sealed.  Once on the ground floor, the man was unable to find it again.  Unless the man lost both shoes—and we only found one.  With a sudden urge to explore I turned on my flashlight.

I had never journeyed down into the coal pit before.

Secrets of Black & White

Colors of the rainbow are secret in the still world of black and white photography.  When thumbing through an album or shoebox of photographs, I gaze into the eyes of a distant relation or complete stranger, wondering what color their eyes are.  Dark colored eyes are brown.  Light colored eyes are blue.  If only it were that simple.  Not everyone has blue or brown eyes—I don’t.

The first color photograph of the Windsor Hotel I have come across was taken in the 1970s.  Early color experiments with photos date back to the 1840s.  Though, color photography has only been a regular practice since the 1950s.  When magnifying an early day shot of the Windsor Hotel on my computer, I find myself peeking into windows, reading any signage and examining the black and white trim work on the building.  Today the Windsor Hotel stands with one trim color: a sun-bleached limestone.  Once upon a time (from the 1880s – 1940s), the limestone was accented with additional colors.  No one alive today remembers the color, or at least no one I have talked to.

On a quest to discover these colors, I find myself standing across the street of the old hotel with my telescope.  I do not actually own a telescope, but have discovered that the tool I have used to capture the bride and groom at the altar, while standing at the back of a church, has more than one use.  Straining my eye through my telephoto camera lens, I scan and capture the decorative metal work along the top of the Windsor, trying to find a trace of forgotten color.  The trim was painted over 60 years ago.  Surely the paint has peeled enough to reveal what is underneath.  As I review my images, I realize I might as well gaze into another black and white photograph.  Paint has peeled away, but only reveals the naked metal underneath.  Still, I walk from side to side of the building’s front, capturing every detail, while an old man with sandy cheeks watches from a nearby park bench.  If nothing else, I will have a lot of “before restoration” photographs to keep on file.  Having come straight to the Windsor from work at the gallery, my feet begin to long for my Chuck Talyors.  Dress shoes are only comfortable in Dr. Sholl’s opinion.  Record-breaking triple digit heat does not add any additional comfort.  I heard on the news that a man fried an egg on the dash of his car.

Air inside the hotel is not any cooler.  If anything, it is more uncomfortable because there is no circulation.  I head up into the hotel atrium.  It’s an oven.  With sweat forming on the tip of my nose, I continue the day’s adventure—searching for color.  Peeling paint might not reveal former colors from a street view, but might elsewhere.  In the Presidential Suite, I pull open a fire escape door.  Hot air gushes into the room.  Oddly, the hot air is a welcome relief.  Moving air, hot or cold, is better than none at all.  The outside of the wooden fire escape door is again painted to match a bleached limestone.  Paint is cracked and crumbling from the gray wood.  There is no sign of other color.

I go from room to room.  While wiping sweat from my face and neck, I examine the windows where the paint meets the glass.  Everyone who has painted window trim on a house before knows that paint will attach to windows.  Paint and glass attract each other, like peanut butter and jelly.  All I want to know is what flavor the jelly is: grape, strawberry, blueberry or perhaps peach?  Victorian color pallets were broad.  Not like the 1950s when common colors where baby pink, powdered blue, sunny yellow and minty green.  But alas, all I find is peanut butter—the same yellowish limestone.

As I reach the top of the fourth floor, I find an open door into one of the guest rooms.  Open doors are not uncommon in the vacant hotel.  This one, however, has always been shut and locked.  There are three locked doors in the hotel, or there were.  And while most rooms are empty, this one was not.  In fact, the room was packed full.  Stacks of swamp coolers, piles of windows, scraps of woodwork, carpet and even a couple of porcelain spittoons all occupy the room.  On the only bare spot of floor, there was a blue square of painters tape.  Looks like the Wichita Paranormal Society forced their way into a locked room during their last visit, even though I asked them not to.  The door was not damaged, though, and that is all that really mattered.  Several of the blue squares can now be found throughout the hotel.  A ball is placed in the center of the square.  If it leaves the square, that is proof that there is a spirit/orb/ghost in the room.  Or it may prove that someone, who likes to play practical jokes, knows who to kick a ball.  After looking through the piles of colorless windows, I decided that the fourth floor, which is about twice as hot as the third, is a little too warm to stay on.  With damp hair matted to my forehead, I retreat down the stairs.

Down on Main Street, I find that my little park bench viewer has also retreated, most likely to air conditioning.  He wasn’t the only one.  Downtown does not offer much activity on a Saturday evening.  My car sits alone, almost abandoned looking along Main Street.  This may have had something to do with the fact that there was a pigeon sitting on top—that figures.  I just washed it.  Allowing me to stand in arm’s distance, I hold up my camera.

“Smile,” I say.

Looking up at the hotel again, I deny defeat and decide to take a stroll through the alley.  The back of the hotel has fallen victim to stucco.  I don’t expect to find trim color.  Then I notice it.  The windows are not limestone colored.  Instead, they are green.  But that is not the only color.  I climb on top an old air conditioner so that I can get closer to one of the lower windows.  There is another color under the peeling green paint—just one other color.  When the hotel was repainted in the 1940s, the back windows were not painted.  Back windows were left green.  Under the green was the color I had been searching for.  I reveal a small razor blade from my pocket and gently shave a small portion of the paint off.  Brittle, most of my sample turns to dust.  I am left with a few pieces, just large enough to have the color matched.

The result—Majestic Blue.

 

 

No Pepsi Required

Teeth do not lie.  My dentist will know who has been drinking Pepsi everyday for a month.  Consumption was necessary to acquire bottle caps.  More gold bottle caps meant more votes during the Windsor Hotel’s run in the Pepsi Refresh Project.  The final result: we lost.

The Windsor Hotel placed fifty-third in the $50,000 category.  Only the top ten projects receive a grant.  Pepsi posted the first rankings on July third.  We ranked thirtieth in the nation.  First place was occupied by a children’s playground.  The playground never gave up the swing all the other competitors wanted a go on.  A single woman registered the project, rather than an organization of supporters.  Her project had three Twitter Tweets, while the Preservation Alliance had thirty-one.  She had 129 Facebook likes in the end.  The Alliance had 581.  She won— and I cannot help but wondering what smells like stale soda?

I have already been approached with the “when we enter again.” My intention was to enter once—to give it a shot.  That shot included a PSA to the Telegram, a letter to the editor of the Telegram, a letter from the editor, several newspaper ads and an announcement on KSN on July first stating that the Windsor Hotel has been accepted in the Pepsi Refresh Project for the month of July.  Posters were cloned and cast throughout the community along with table tents, flyers and business cards.  The president of the Alliance and his family even purchased two shopping carts full of Pepsi refreshments to give away July 15 during one of the Municipal Band concerts in Stevens’ Park.  We gave it a shot—someone else had better aim.

First place went to a playground.  Second place went to a playground.  Third place went to a playground.  I will jump on a merry-go-round any day, but again, the air is perfumed with stale soda.

Shortly after launching the Windsor Hotel into the Pepsi Refresh Project I received an e-mail asking us to back out of the project and instead give all our votes to another project.  They in turn, after winning, would return the favor.  Funds are not awarded to the project with the strongest community support.  Projects are funded to those who know how to work the system.  I declined the offer.  We lost, but walked away as an honest competitor.

It’s all carbonated water under the bridge.

Now for the next plan of action: the Finney County Preservation Alliance is going to launch a project on www.kickstarter.com.  Plans are to paint the north and west sides of the Windsor Hotel.  In 1929 the brick on the north and west sides of the building were concealed under stucco to make the building “waterproof.”  This technique proved efficient, especially with the introduction of something we call the Dust Bowl.  Since then, the stucco was painted white.  Over time the stucco cracked, resulting in the addition of gray patches.  Today the north and west sides of the hotel could camouflage 101 Dalmatians.  Instead of repainting the sides white, the color will be matched to the brick on the front of the building.  A new “Windsor Hotel” mural/logo will replace the current signage under the tower.

This is an Internet project that allows supporters to pledge donations with their credit card, knowing that the transaction will only occur if the project meets one hundred percent of the needed funding.  Basically, if all the fans on the Windsor Hotel Facebook page pledge $10 to $20 each, the project will be funded.  Sounds simple, but not everyone on the Facebook page will pledge.  Expect to see another letter to the editor of the Telegram this September.

No Pepsi required.

The Pepsi Refresh Project

I have always had a belief that the majority of goods at dollar stores are formed out of compacted saw dust.  This belief did not stop me from loading a cart full of Pepsi two-liters at Dollar General, as if I were I a Y2K fanatic.  A Fourth of July sale knocked the price on Pepsi products down to a single dollar, and I was in need of Pepsi – or rather the gold bottle caps found on Pepsi, Diet Pepsi and Pepsi Max.

At 11:00 p.m. (noon Eastern Standard Time) on July 1, I was notified that the Windsor Hotel had been accepted into the Pepsi Refresh Project and would have the chance to win $50,000 if enough votes were collected during the month of July.  With one thousand applications accepted and ten grants awarded each month, I knew it would be worth a shot.

After three days of voting, rankings were posted.  The Windsor Hotel Lobby Restoration Project ranked thirtieth in the nation.  Meaning we only had to climb twenty places and a grant would be ours.  Today, our ranking is forty-one.  We are going the wrong way.  If I had a contact list for the entire cellular community, I would be known as the community spammer.  Perhaps I already am.  Upon learning that we were in the Pepsi Refresh Project, I sent an e-blast out to my entire e-mail contact list.

Additionally, posters and table tents have been sprouting throughout local businesses and within the next few days, small business cards with voting information will invade town, similar to how moths invade the town every spring – they are everywhere.  The first batch states “Tape this card to you computer.”  (My eyes often see imaginary letters, most commonly the letter R).  The cards should state “Tape this card to YOUR computer.”  My hopes are that no one will notice the large green elephant drinking tea in the corner of the room.  Typos happen.  Wanting to reprint the whole first batch, I decided to hug a tree instead.  You can tape the card to you computer.  Luckily, the Pepsi Refresh ad at Mitchell Theatres’ Sequoyah 8 is grammatically correct.  At least it will be until I see it with my own eyes.

The Windsor Hotel can win the Pepsi Refresh Project.   Community commitment to voting is the key.  Without community support, the Preservation Alliance efforts will be as useful as an expired can of Pepsi – rather flat.

My hope is that Garden City is up to the challenge.  I will be voting everyday and encouraging anyone who needs a reminder to join the Preservation Alliance e-blast list by contacting gardencitywindsorhotel@gmail.com.  We only have one shot at this.  Vote three times every day.  One: vote every day by texting 107541 to 73774 (Pepsi).  Two: vote every day by visiting http://www.refresheverything.com/windsorhotel and sign-in with Pepsi.  Three: vote every day by visiting http://www.refresheverything.com/windsorhotel and sign-in with Facebook.  Get additional votes by purchasing Pepsi, Diet Pepsi or Pepsi Max with gold bottle caps.  The caps offer between five and one hundred additional “Power Votes.”

Vote everyday and the Windsor Hotel lobby will be restored.

Cheers.

Nothing to do in Garden City

Missing: blue mailbox near Garden City Arts’ Gallery.  If the mailbox had not been bolted to the sidewalk, locals may have worried that the mailbox had escaped captivity, proving a threat to women and children.  But the blue bin had been properly contained and did not prove a threat to anyone.  But, it is gone.  The reason: not enough use.  According to the local postal services, a stationed mailbox must meet a required number of letters collected to remain stationed in the given location.  I was given notice that my nearby mailbox was listed as endangered.  Had it been closer to Christmas, I would have written several thousand letters to Santa to keep the mailbox from going extinct.

There is only one mailbox in the downtown business district now.

After dropping a letter addressed to Liberal, Kansas in the Patrick Dugan’s mailbox, I head down the sidewalk toward the Downtown Vision office in the Windsor Hotel.  Many of the downtown businesses still have a “Freedom Parade” poster fading in their window. The Fourth of July parade has been canceled due to lack of participants.  Fireworks are also canceled.  Drought tends to be unfair, especially when the drought is said to be dryer than the Dust Bowl days.  There was at least water in the river during the Dirty Thirties.

The Downtown Vision door always requires a hard push before entrance.  Window shoppers often do not realize that Downtown Vision is in the Windsor Hotel.  Most believe the Windsor Hotel is one hundred percent unused.  But Beverly, the director of the organization, is always there and on the phone while multi-tasking on her computer.  Advancing toward the back of the office I meet up with two fellow Preservation Alliance board members, Don and Norma.  Three more women join us for the first Membership Committee meeting.  Though I am not on this particular committee, I attend anyway.  I serve on the Promotion Committee and Building Committee, both of which meet the following evening (tonight).

At 5:00 p.m. I will lock the Arts Gallery doors and head over to the Windsor for another meeting.  There will be plenty to discuss, as we nervously await the clock to strike noon on Friday.  At noon, we will know whether or not we have been accepted into the Pepsi Refresh Project.  If accepted, the Windsor Hotel will have a chance to win $50,000 to restore the hotel lobby.  Meaning, faithful followers of the Windsor must either vote online, or via text, throughout the month of July.  Dedication is the only requirement.  One minute of every day to vote.

This is a chance to give the Windsor Hotel restoration needed funds.  My only hope is that Garden City is up to the challenge.  Friends of Lee Richardson Zoo were accepted into the Pepsi Refresh Project last year and managed to climb into fourteenth place, for a short while.  But the project must reach tenth place to earn a grant.  They lost.  Our community lost.  The same community always moans: “There is nothing to do in Garden City.”  Truly, there is nothing to do, for those who do nothing.

Write a letter.  March in a parade.  Vote.

Vote for the Windsor and it will never go missing.

Pigeon Suite

Two dead pigeons greet me as I step into the atrium.  New décor is not always welcome.

“Sorry,” I say to the five individuals from Augusta, Kansas, who had just signed the guestbook downstairs.  “I should have came up earlier and made a walk through the halls.”

One of the women simply smiles, pulling her blouse up to mask her nose.  Her ten-year-old daughter giggles.

A sudden rustle of wings distracts our attention from the floor to the ceiling.  Two live pigeons are trying to escape through the skylights.  Unsuccessful, they land on a staircase banister on the third floor.

“Looks like someone has opened the Pigeon Room,” I say.

There is a room on the fourth floor, in the northeast corner, which I have never entered.  I call it the Pigeon Suite.  Enough feathers have escaped from under the door and into the hall to stuff a pillow with.  Not that the pillow could possibly be comfortable, due to the smell: a mix of pigeon pies and decaying death.  Upon discovering the sealed door during one of my early visits, I immediately reached for the door knob.  The brass squealed as I slowly turned and lightly pushed the door open.  As a rush of wings and screeches attempted to mimic the sound of a twister, I slammed the door shut.  Some doors are best left closed, at least for the current time.

The pigeons above my Augusta tourists tried another escape through the skylights and then collapsed onto one of the mahogany staircases, unsure why they could not fly through the window.  One of the pigeons was still fluffy and white, having hatched only weeks before, but old enough to fly.  I knew I would have to get the birds out after the tour was over.

“We’ll go ahead and step into the dining room,” I say, knowing my tour group will not be happy if the pigeons start planning an air strike.  Falling bird pies hurt.  I speak from experience.

We do not advance far before the groups’ Gramps decides that he better spend the rest of the visit in a seated position.  Without having any chairs to lounge on, he sinks onto one of the staircases and rests his chin in his hands, staring down at the floor.  We have not gone far enough for him to have tiered.  I am tempted to ask if he has been in the Windsor Hotel before, but I do not.  He is distant, almost as if revisiting a time from his past in a familiar place.  We continue the tour.  Gramps is left in his own place and time.

After making the usual round with a final stop in the owner’s suite, we make our way back down to Main Street.  I thank the group for coming, hand them a membership form and ask a favor.  I ask them to vote.  The evening before, I received an e-mail from Pepsi, informing us that we were one of the 1,000 applications accepted to compete for a $50,000 Pepsi Refresh Grant in July.  Our application would need reviewed one final time, but we were in.

I lock the door as they exit the building.  After finding a shovel, I head back upstairs to peel the flattened birds off the floor.  Someday in the near future, there will be no Pigeon Suite.  Until then—

“Come on, out the door,” I say to the two pigeons bouncing off the skylights.  The mother bird flies in the opposite direction.  Her hatchling follows.  I prop the door to the roof open, knowing I will have to run up and down the stairs as I escort the thinning birds outside.

“Fly.”

The Open Door

Another bat attempted to bounce off the top of my head as I dropped to the dusty carpet.  Bats, specifically Little Brown Bats, fly like intoxicated birds.  They do not fly straight.  Instead they bounce from the ceiling to the floor, or at least they do in old hotels.  I jump back onto my feet and in a stooped-Igor form, took off down the hall again, only to have another bat charge at me as if I were a large beetle.

“Did you find it?”  My Dad calls from the floor below.

“No,” I say.  “I didn’t even know there was electricity on the fourth floor.”

With a lantern in hand, I race down the hall and turn the corner only to find two more bats.  Again I drop to the floor.  Dust springs out of the carpet.

I had been working on State Theatre Historic Tour preparations across the street that night.  When loading a few things into my Saturn trunk I notic that one of the fire escape doors on the Windsor Hotel’s second floor was open.  The door closed and opened as it attempted a waltz with the wind.  Closing my car trunk, I pull out my keys and dart across deserted Main Street.  After fumbling for my Windsor key, I swim through the shadows of the once-grand lobby, heading up the stairs.  I pause before reaching the top stair.  Lights are on.  Wind did not blow the fire escape door open.  Someone opened it.  Someone without a key was in the Windsor Hotel.

Acting as a stick bug in a willow tree, I find myself walking backward down the stairs.  Hide-and-seek is a game I will never outgrow.  Though, I like to know who is hiding.  On the safety of the Main Street sidewalk, I look up at the hotel.  No lights can be seen from the street, but the door on the second floor is still open.  Sliding open my cell phone, I find the name “Don” and press send.

“Hello Don, sorry for calling so late,” I say, knowing that the president of the Preservation Alliance would want to know about late night guests in the hotel, “but one of the fire escape doors on the Windsor is open and there are lights on.”

“On the upper floors?”  Don asks.

“A door on the second floor,” I say.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Don says.

Apparently, a Windsor Hotel enthusiast had borrowed a key that day to show the hotel to a friend.  Then someone forgot to shut the door—and turn off the lights.

“I’ll go ahead and get the lights turned off, Don.”

After sliding my phone shut, I find myself scrolling through my address book again.

“Dad, can you meet me at the Windsor?  Bring a flashlight.”

Back in the State Theatre lobby, I wait behind the glass doors and watch as the single door on the Windsor’s second story swings back and forth, back and forth.

Within fifteen minutes I find myself heading back up the stairs toward the hotel atrium with Dad’s lantern in hand.  Dad follows with his usual pocket flashlight.  If ever in need, Dad is always armed with a Maglite in his pocket and a band aid in his wallet.

After closing and locking the door in Steven’s Suite, we climb the stairs toward the fourth floor and begin a game of hide-and-seek—for light switches.