| Sunday, October 22, 2006 11:50 PM CDT |
Group hopes to turn The Mill into a museum
LINCOLN -- A new group is hoping to turn the landmark Mill restaurant into a museum. Foundation spokesman Geoff Ladd, who represents the newly formed Route 66 Heritage Foundation of Logan County, said plans call for partially demolishing the structure and eventually turning the original building with its Dutch windmill blades into a tourism hotspot.
“The city likes this because they saw it as an eyesore, but we saw this quaint little old windmill as a future tourism hotspot,” said Ladd.
The crumbling structure at Washington and First streets was long known as a popular bar and restaurant on the original Route 66. Once rebuilt, it will be the only Route 66 attraction in the city of Lincoln.
A three-phase project has been proposed by Ladd and the foundation. The first phase would be to demolish the back portion of The Mill, which was added several years after the restaurant was built in 1929 and would cost between $20,000 and $24,000.
The second phase would be sprucing up the property to turn it back into a “photo spot.” Ladd said by using volunteer labor for this phase, it would likely cost no more than $4,000.
The third and final phase would be complete restoration of the restaurant to turn it into a museum, which he said would take several years to accomplish at a cost not yet determined.
Ladd said the foundation hopes to finance the first two phases through a local bank. The group will hold fund-raisers to pay off the loan. For the third phase, the foundation hopes to secure money through fundraisers and private donations.
Ladd said the foundation hopes to get started within the next few weeks so the expected 5,000 tourists can start to visit for the photo attraction and another 10,000 to 25,000 tourists can visit when it opens as a museum.
“Once we get it looking pleasing outside in the next couple weeks, it will already be an attraction,” said Ladd. “It will still be a few years until we can get the museum built inside. It’s a very ambitious project, but this has been a 15-year problem and there is finally a solution. It’s definitely going to be a wild ride.”
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