When the owners of Perry’s Hotel Pattee informed Raccoon Valley Bank they planned to default on their loan and close the doors immediately, it came as a surprise to many.

Though the hotel has had financial issues in the past, City Administrator Butch Niebuhr says they didn’t expect anything to happen so abruptly.

Fortunately, Niebuhr says it should be a temporary closure and hopefully a long term solution will be finalized soon.

“Hopefully they can come up with an agreement on who to hire to get it back open again, so that it’s open during the interim.  We think, and that group of people (the city, Perry Industries and Perry Economic Development) thinks that there’s some viable people out there to purchase the hotel and have it open permanently here in the next couple, two to three months” says Niebuhr.

Niebuhr says overall, this will hopefully just be a step toward an even brighter future for the hotel.

“You know in the long run, it’s a bad deal seeing it closed, and the way it closed, but maybe that’s the way good things happen and we’ll end up with one owner who will be here local, and move here local and run it from a local perspective.”

Niebuhr says the ones he really feels sorry for in this situation is the hotel employees.  He says his heart goes out to them in this time of uncertainty and they plan to point the new owners in the direction of the past employees and hopefully be able to offer them future employment.

Specifics on who will reopen the hotel and when are not known at this time but we’ll continue to bring you updates as they become official.

Click here to hear the full interview with Butch Niebuhr

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