Zarah Hotel

Zarah Hotel 1925-1972

Referred to as Hotel Zarah or Zarah Hotel, this historic building is getting a new lease on life with a restoration underway. One that has been over a decade in the making.

The Great Bend Hotel Corporation constructed the Zarah Hotel for around $105,000 in 1925. With its 50 modern rooms spread out across three stories, Great Bend was able to provide travelers and tourists with full care. Under the leadership of  J.F. Benson room rates ran about $1.50.

One of the earliest events at the hotel was the convention of the Knights of Columbus which had used the Zarah Hotel as the event headquarters. “Upon arrival in the city delegates and visitors are requested to go to headquarters (Hotel Zarah), present their room reservation cards, register, and will then be taken to their rooms.”

Just a year after the opening of Hotel Zarah, a future notable figure would stay here and write to his beloved wife Bess from the hotel stationery. Harry S. Truman, before becoming president had a ritual with his wife that anytime he traveled to a new hotel he would write her on the stationary, another example of this is when he stayed at the Landmark Hotel. The photo above shows the letter to Bess.

In the 1930s C.D. Stratton was the owner of the hotel, and  Mrs. E.T. Poland came to take over management of the Zarah around 1936. Her daughter Mrs. Etta Roberts was the former manager of the hotel. Her mother possibly fell in love with the property upon her visits to her daughter.

Just a few years later the Great Bend Hotel Corporation authorized plans from Architect C.M. Boucher for a three-story, 32-room addition to the south side of the Zarah Hotel. At the time it was still the newest hotel in Great Bend, but they wanted to continue being the best of the best in town. Busboom & Rauh of Salina were awarded the contract for around $50,000. The new total number of rooms came out to be just shy of 90. The new addition would have 40 feet of frontage on main street for businesses on the main floor and would be faced with light buff brick.

However temporary delays halted some of the construction due to changes being made to construction plans. These revisions allowed for a full basement and a strong enough foundation to allow for 1-2 additional stories to be added on later although this never happened. Davidson Plumbing and Heating was awarded the plumbing contract for $8,119 and the Hill Electric Co. installed electric equipment for $1,147. J.E. Coultis was hired to paint the rooms at $2,386. At the same time, owner Stratton was having improvements made to the coffee shop located on the ground floor.

Beck-Cross Hotels Co. of Hutchinson purchased the Zarah Hotel and Stamey (Landmark) Hotel in 1943. The transactions of both hotels totaled more than $170,000, they had previously just been the operators of the Stamey. Larry Beck came from Kansas City to manage the newly purchased hotel. Details of the deal included all 900 shares of the common stock and 428/454 shares of the preferred stock being owned now by Beck-Cross.

Immediately they got to work on making improvements of sorts. New help including a chef and pastry cook were brought in to allow the coffee shop to stay open seven days a week. About six years after the purchase the hotel underwent an 11-month renovation and redecorating to bring it up to Beck-Cross standards. With the completion of the renovation, Walter Groce took over as manager, he had previously managed the Stamey Hotel in Hutchinson for Beck-Cross.

Beck-Cross sold off most of its hotel interests in the late 1950s including Landmark Hotel and Zarah Hotel. Zarah was sold to Robert Miller of Wichita, him and his wife moved into the building upon their arrival on October 1, 1959. Potentially seeing the decline in the use of the hotel, Miller relinquished his interest in the hotel just a few short years later. Making Beck-Cross the main shareholder once again.

Monte Parrish approached the entity in 1961 with a cash offer for the assets of the Great Bend Hotel Corp., and the corporate stock. The offer was apparently one that Beck-Cross couldn’t resist as they accepted it, although the hotel fixtures and equipment remained in a partnership with Beck-Cross. Parrish would continue running the hotel as it had before with employees keeping their jobs as well.

For three years the hotel had been running it was operating at a loss, prompting Beck-Cross to come to the decision that one sole owner would be more beneficial to the building. They blamed increased taxes and a change in travel habits by the community had caused the hotels’ income to decline. But Parrish seemed hopeful of the future options to turn it into housing or keep it as a downtown hotel and convention center.

But the beginning of the end came at the end of the ’60s when the Parrish Hotel near here went up in flames. Both were owned by Monte Parrish, and the fire not only prompted a routine fire inspection of the Zarah Hotel but also brought violations.

Parrish was served with papers directing him to fix 18 items at the Zarah before his hotel and restaurant license could be reissued for operations. Gas and electric service was terminated at the building until the heating system boiler was repaired or replaced and approved by an inspector. Suppliers of the electricity and gas were told that future services should only be turned on at their own risk.

A state fire inspector left the Zarah using the word “unbelievable” to describe the code violations. “A kerosene stove to heat a hotel is the most unbelievable thing I’ve ever seen,” said Paul Beard. He continued on describing the violations of having an unvented heater, fire doors propped open, and electric heaters being used in the rooms of guests. Firemen drew concern over the hotels’ electrical circuit load and the fumes from the kerosene.

Abandonment

And so the Zarah Hotel closed by order of the fire marshal on the basis that it was unsuitable for occupancy. One blurb in the local paper of 1973 even stated that all of the pigeons that once decorated the courthouse had found refuge in the upper floors of the Zarah through many busted-out windows on the second and third floors.

The city sought to demolish the condemned hotel in 1975 by seeking a Community Development grant. Part of the grand would be used to purchase the hotel, demolish it, and then sell the land for redevelopment. Thankfully they never received the grant therefore it was back to the drawing board.

Economic Development Director Gene Cole at the time to discuss plans to purchase and then completely renovate the Zarah into an apartment building for the elderly. During that meeting, he indicated that they would be putting out an application for the Department of Housing and Urban Development funding to make it happen. A firm from Kansas City deemed the building to be structurally sound during an inspection. The stars seemed to be aligning to turn this into a 45-unit apartment building. They submitted a HUD application but were ultimately unsuccessful.

So what now? Would the Zarah Hotel see the light of day and the smiles of patrons again?

Zarah Mall 1978-Present

A few years after its brush with demolition, Checks Inc. was created and they had their eyes set on the property. But not as a hotel, as a mall of sorts. That was how Zarah Mall was birthed. The first phase of renovations were completed in 1978 and off the bat, most spaces on the first floor were already leased. About six shops and offices were bringing business back to Zarah. The Zarah Mall turned out to be a great success with businesses flourishing even to present day.

Lofts at the Zarah

But My Town, LLC had bigger plans for the Zarah though, envisioning a social-economic domino effect by redeveloping the upper floors of the Zarah. The first phase of their mission was to convert nine units on the second floor into affordable housing ranging from $750–1,200 per month and later work on the upper floors.

The Great Bend City Council approved applying for a moderate-income housing grant on behalf of Great Bend Economic Development to fund the initiative in 2021. The project falls under the MyTown initiative, primarily owned by Sheryl Cheely, which aims to revitalize downtown businesses. The $350,000 grant request does not require city funds and is part of the Kansas Housing Resources Corporation’s program, which provides up to $400,000 annually to small communities. The city would be able to apply for future grants for other projects.

Due to the fast turnaround nature of submitting the application the GBED was not selected to receive the $350,000 grant. But with more time to work on the application they could apply the following year and attempt to develop around 24 units.

Success was met in 2023 when Pomeroy Development, one of the vital developers of this project and of the nearby Landmark Apartments restoration, announced that the Zarah had been awarded $1.425 million in Moderate Income Housing funds from KHRC. But ultimately around $6 million would need to be raising to make this long time dream a reality.

“We have submitted information to the City of Great Bend to pursue a Rural Housing Incentive District and something called an Industrial Revenue Bond Issue that has to do with both property tax abatement and abatement on sales tax for construction materials,” said Justin Pregont of Pomeroy Development. “We do not have the final approval of those. That’s an ongoing conversation. I think we’ll get there, but those are a couple of examples of things that are outstanding,” said Pregont.

Other huge contributions to the project include: GBED awarded a $265,650 grant, Permanent Financing – $1.6 million, State Historic Tax Credits – $1.3 million, Federal Historic Tax Credit investor equity- $640,000, and around $725,000 in Owner Equity Contributions.

With funding in place, work is in full swing to turn this decades-old dream of the Lofts at the Zarah into Great Bend’s next star-studded apartments. The hope is that the new development will not only cause the first-floor businesses to thrive but that younger generations might stick around a bit longer and establish more businesses in the downtown area.

Gallery Below of Zarah Hotel

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