Renovations to the historic Keefer House Hotel in downtown Hillsdale have been hampered somewhat by the nation’s economic downturn in recent months.
“There are issues we are trying to stay on top of, I can’t predict what will happen if we don’t get everything we need in six months,” Brant Cohen, the Michigan Development Associate for CL Real Estate said. “It’s a fluid process and as of right now we are still moving forward.”
Cohen said they closed on their financing last year, and although they’ve seen some change orders which increased costs, a contingency plan was in place that mitigated it from being a bigger issue.
“Outside of dramatic changes that could happen, we have all of our money and we have everything in place,” Cohen said. “We are moving forward with the project and we will reach an endpoint.”
Renovations are being hampered by supply chain issues that are plaguing several industries across the nation as part of a recent economic downturn.
“That’s been a big concern and we’ve been trying to get ahead of it as best we can. Who would’ve anticipated it? We thought we were going to get out of COVID and we worked our butts off to get through that…we’re still working our butts off everyday, but it continues to be an amazing world out there where stuff happens that you just don’t fully anticipate,” Cohen said. “We are doing our best to stay on top of it, we’re getting out of a labor shortage as well, and luckily we had our subs locked in as best we could.”
Cohen said that kitchen suppliers for the restaurant portion of the renovations have stated that items that once took three weeks to order can now take as long as eight months to arrive.
“They told us when you place your order, we can lock in the price of the equipment but we cannot lock in the shipping and processing,” Cohen said.
Turning to the public’s concern about the lack of progress in recent months at the site, Cohen said they started demolition ahead of having everything together.
“That demolition part is outside of actual construction, construction and demolition are two different things,” Cohen said. “We’re about to wrap up with the demolition…we are about 85-percent there so we have a few more weeks of demo to go. Then it goes to structural stuff and once we are through that we should see ourselves in a better position and will have a better idea when the end date will be.”
Cohen said that historical items that are salvageable have been removed and they are in the process of restoring them. A subcontractor has been tediously working to remove decades worth of paint from the original tin work which will be re-incorporated into the space to maintain the historic Keefer House Hotel’s status as an icon in downtown Hillsdale.
Cohen will begin providing a monthly update on the status of work being done to the Keefer House Hotel in a monthly guest column in The Hillsdale Daily News as progress continues to keep the public informed.
