The Keefer House Hotel may be ready for business by late spring or early summer, complete with a dining room and restaurant.   

Phoenix Builders and Apex Painting are working together to restore the 130-year-old building. The hotel is owned by CL Real Estate, which is partnering with Phoenix Builders to restore the hotel while keeping its historical value, said Tom Wilson, Phoenix Builders’ construction superintendent. Wilson said the project will bring the building up to code.

“It’s really a neat undertaking for us because we’re going to take a hotel that’s over 130 years old, and we’re going to do our best to try to keep her old bones together,” he said.

Wilson said his company plans to salvage many things from the hotel such as tin ceiling tiles, wall tins, door hardware, and railings so they can keep the historical value of the hotel intact. 

The hotel will likely open in late spring or early summer and will offer 32 rooms, 28 of them being king and queen-size bedrooms. The hotel will feature a main lobby,  dining room, and a restaurant in back, Wilson said. 

Lauren Fink, owner of Apex Painting, said her company was hired to do the hotel’s interior paint work. 

“We are doing some restoration work right now and then as we get closer, we will do the interior painting,” Fink said. 

Fink said she and her team are taking the same approach as Phoenix Builders, attempting to salvage the building’s history through painting. 

“We are working on all of the historic ceiling tiles, and we are restoring about 1,000 square feet of those tiles in our paint shop,” Fink said. 

Fink said she is excited to be part of a project to beautify downtown Hillsdale. 

“We have our shop in downtown Hillsdale, so we really enjoy it,” Fink said. 

Gianna Green, communities manager at CL Real Estate, said before the Keefer House Hotel was built, a wooden building called the Hillsdale Hotel stood in its place. 

“The Hillsdale Hotel burned down and the Keefer House Hotel as we know it and see it now was built in 1885 on top of the ashes,” Green said. 

The hotel used to play a vital role when Hillsdale was an important stop during the railroad boom. Many people came from other places and would stay at hotels in Hillsdale, Green said, and the Keefer House Hotel is one of the only such places that remains.

“The most recent retail tenant that the Keefer House had in there was a Radio Shack in the basement,” Green said.

The city shut the building down for poor living conditions in 2002, Green said. After that, it sat derelict and went through several different owners, she said.

“With the city’s help, CL Real Estate development has been working tirelessly since 2018 to get the Keefer House Hotel back up and running as a boutique hotel,” Green said.