St. Nicholas Plans Include Restaurant and Microbrewery
</element><element id="paragraph-1" type="body"><![CDATA["All of this is quite impressive," Du Quoin Chamber of Commerce president Fred Huff said of Abbey Ancell's presentation on plans for the historic St. Nicholas Hotel in downtown Du Quoin.
Ancell is the daughter of Du Quoin attorney Patricia (Ancell) Gross. Patricia and husband Gene Gross are two of the partners in this historic rescue mission.
Abbey will manage what will become a new signature restaurant for Du Quoin with its own chef, a microbrewery and an elevator that can take guests to what will become second floor meeting rooms and, at some point, the potential for third floor apartments.
"Abbey brought a freshness to the meeting," Huff continued, thanking her for updating the chamber.
Completion of the project is "not necessarily immediate," Huff said. The partners are hoping that much of the restoration will be completed by mid-fall.
The plan is exacting and the work painstaking.
The rescue began years ago by purchasing the hotel out of a county tax sale. The St. Nicholas was a storied stop along the Illinois Central Railroad and one of several downtown hotels--now the last one.
The St. Nicholas fell victim to a fire in its early years and was beautifully reconstructed, remodeled twice under the Joe Skoffic family ownership.
Joe fully maintained the restaurant and lounge areas. It went into disrepair under a later, short-lived ownership.
The project has involved stabilizing the structural integrity of the building. That included the installation of large, steel beams beneath the floor joists of the second floor and cutting out large sections of flooring and walls to restore structural integrity.
Abbey told the chamber the partners are just now taking bids on reconstruction and remodeling.
The plan calls for a restaurant with its own chef and a lounge on the north side with seating spilling over into what's known as a microbrewery on the south side of the building.
A microbrewery is exactly that. Like vineyards along a "wine trail" , hundreds of small in-house breweries have spring up across the U.S. in recent decades. They are often attached to a bar (known as a "brewpub") where the product could be sold directly. As microbrews proliferated, some became more than microbrews, necessitating the definition of the broader category of craft beer. The largest American craft brewery is the Boston Beer Company, makers of Samuel Adams.Portland, Oregon is very well known for its microbrew proliferation. In 2008, Portland had 30 microbreweries located within the city limits, more than any city in the world and greater than one-third of the state total. Many of Portland's 46 microbrew outlets have won nationwide and international acclaim.
There is a romance in drinking the beer while you watch it being produced.
Renovations provide for the installation of an elevator to make the entire building completely accessible by anyone.
Guests of the evening were staff members with South Central Transit (SCT), which provides high quality shuttle service throughout Southern Illinois. The evening ended with a shuttle ride from Alongi's in downtown Du Quoin out to the Hidden Lakes subdivision development owned by Dr. Jack Struck.
It was the perfect end to a great evening of good news for the area.