Want to live, work in the Flint Hills? Historic hotel, restaurant owner has a deal for you
Before coronavirus started shuttering businesses around the country, Tammy Ensey spent her days managing the 133-year-old Elgin Hotel in Marion, a small town about 60 miles north of Wichita.
And she spent her evenings overseeing Parlour 1886, a luxurious restaurant with dim lighting and wood accents that she spent around $200,000 renovating and opened inside the hotel in October.
It’s a dreamy life, she said, living in the Flint Hills and taking care of guests at the 12-room hotel. But when she had to close the restaurant during coronavirus, she realized that it might not be her dream.
Now, she’s looking for someone to take over the restaurant. And although she’s willing to keep running the hotel, she’d also sell it to the right buyer.
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She’s also looking for a buyer for the coffee shop her mother owns in a Queen Anne Victorian home across the street.
“If this is somebody else’s dream, where the universe has been pointing them, then everything’s for sale. Everything’s on the table,” she said.
Ensey, who in 2016 bought the hotel with her husband, Jeremy, says that, pre-coronavirus, the businesses were all doing well. The hotel, which stayed open throughout, is frequently booked, and she’d recently introduced regional day-trip experiences, like a waterfall tour, that were quite popular.
The restaurant, which is the only fine-dining establishment in the area, also was performing well and drawing customers from all over — some local and some out-of-towners looking for special occasion getaways.
“It was actually going very well,” she said. “We had a change in our chef in February, and shortly after that, this whole COVID thing hit,” she said. “It made me really stop and think, ‘Is this really the business I want to be in?’ I love, love, love the hotel side of it, but I never really felt called to the restaurant side of it.”
She decided to contact both a commercial broker and a business broker, and now, “everything is on the table,” Ensey says.
April Winn-Patrick with NAI Martens in Wichita is handling the real estate. James Clendenin with VR Business Brokers is representing the business.
Ensey said she would be willing to lease the restaurant to someone who wanted to operate it. She’d be willing to keep the hotel. She’d be willing to sell the entire operation, including her mother’s Dorothy’s Coffee House & Tea Room, which has living quarters upstairs. She’d also sell or lease the coffee shop.
Have dreams of living and working in the Flint Hills? She’s ready to talk, Ensey said.
“Through this time, my husband and I have just thought we were a little uncomfortable with the amount of debt we have on the place,” she said. “What we were bringing in was covering that just fine, but when everything halts, you go, ‘Woah. I got myself in a lot of risk here.’”
Ensey’s brokers are listing the hotel, including the real estate and the business, for $1.95 million. The hotel real estate alone is listed at $1.2 million. The 1,500-square-foot restaurant space, which is turn-key, would lease for $3,500 a month.
The coffee shop, which includes a renovated three-bedroom, one bath living quarters upstairs, would lease for $3,700 a month.
Ensey said she closed Parlour 1886 on March 14 but now has a new chef on board and hopes to reopen later this month.
“We’re going to have it operating, so if someone is interested in it, they can see it in action,” she said.
The Elgin Hotel originally opened in 1886 with three stories and 42 sleeping rooms. It operated as a hotel until the 1960s then was abandoned and threatened with demolition.
In the 1980s, it was converted into apartments and put on the National Register of Historic Places. In 2006, Jim and Nancy Cloutier invested $1.9 million to renovate the building, living on the third floor and running it as a bed and breakfast.
The Enseys bought it in 2016, and quickly realized that, without any fine dining options nearby for their guests to enjoy, they’d need to provide it.
Though running a restaurant turned out to be too much for her, Ensey said, she loves the hotel and “wouldn’t mind doing this for the rest of my life.”
But she has a kid in college now and two younger ones at home. The coronavirus pandemic has made her reevaluate, and now, she wants to “see what options are out there.”
Winn-Patrick said that she and Clendenin are ready to talk to anyone who might be interested.
“If someone wants to step in and this is their passion, or if someone wanted to come in as an investor and own the real estate, we could put in place a new lease,” she said. “There are a lot of opportunities depending on what somebody might be looking for.”
This story was originally published June 4, 2020 at 11:56 AM.
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