The city of Pacific, Missouri, has hired an architect to renovate the former Red Cedar Inn restaurant along old Route 66. What exactly the architect will do with it remains an open question.
Patterhn Ives will be paid $33,690, plus reimbursable expenses up to $4,500, to draft a renovation design and provide a cost estimate.
According to a report in the Washington Missourian, there seems to be a consensus to turn the Red Cedar Inn into a history center, genealogy center and visitors center. But other options emerged during a public hearing Feb. 25:
— Turning the Red Cedar Inn into a full-fledged Route 66 museum. New Route 66 Association of Missouri President Rich Dinkela and author Joe Sonderman supported that idea.
— Buy the nearby Wintec pharmaceutical building and use it for genealogy storage to leave more room in the Red Cedar for other purposes.
— Adding special events, including weddings, at the Red Cedar Inn to bring in more revenue to the site, especially when paired with nearby Jensen’s Point.
— Using Red Cedar as a trailhead to draw other visitors. However, a trail between Pacific and Eureka is just a proposal at this point and may be years from becoming reality, if it happens at all.
— Putting a bicycle shop in the building to draw cyclists and users of the proposed bicycle trail.
Criticism of the trailhead-related ideas probably is warranted because no one is sure whether those are possible. And city officials seem committed to the idea of a Route 66 and history museum and visitors center first, with other ideas lower-priority.
The Smith brothers built the Red Cedar Inn restaurant in 1932, then constructed the tavern addition a few years later, from logs cut from the family farm.
The restaurant and bar were a favorite for many travelers on Route 66, including politicians and baseball legends Dizzy Dean and Ted Williams.
The Red Cedar Inn closed abruptly in 2005, with its owners citing rising insurance costs, not long after its 70th anniversary. It remains on the National Register of Historic Places.
(Image of the Red Cedar Inn in 2004 in Pacific, Missouri, by original uploader Kbh3rd (talk) – Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons by Xnatedawgx using CommonsHelper, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6312740)
38k?!!!?
From what I heard from one local business owner in Pacific, MO , a local historical society and museum are supposed to be occupying the building.
Hard to believe they are still trying to figure out what to do with this space after all these years.
The city bought the Red Cedar less than 18 months ago.
Sorry, shouldn’t have used “they”. I just meant that it was hard to believe that the building had not yet been fully re-purposed.