Community meets, greets likely new owners of Hotel Pattee

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Tom and Vickie Maxwell, left, the likely new owners of the Hotel Pattee in Perry, met more than 100 people at a reception Wednesday, including Dan and Emily Leslie of Perry, who are restoring the Dillenbeck and Citizens State Bank buildings in downtown Perry.

It’s not a done deal quite yet, but the likely new owners of the Hotel Pattee, Tom and Vickie Maxwell of Edwardsville, Ill., were warmly welcomed to Perry Wednesday night at a meet-and-greet event in the hotel’s Spring Valley Ballroom.

The crowd of more than 100 vigorously applauded Jay and Denise Hartz, who in four years took the hotelĀ from locked doors and shuttered windows to a highly profitable venture. The Hartzes put the hotel on the market in July and are preparing the next chapter of their lives.

The Hartzes hailed from St. Louis, and the Maxwells themselves live in a St. Louis suburb. Tom Maxwell told the crowd how he came upon the Hotel Pattee after selling the medical-implant business he ran for 25 years.

“I was kind of bored,” he said with good humor. “It was the end of 2016, and my wife said, ‘Listen, I married you for richer or for poorer. I did not marry you for lunch. You need to go do something.’ So I started doing research on hotels. I had always been interested in that business.”

He said he looked at a few available hotels, but nothing really piqued his interest until “all of a sudden a picture of the front of this hotel on a sunny day with all the flags flying was the very first thing I saw. For the next two or three hours, I was just captivated by that first picture.”

“It was just magical,” Maxwell said.

He spent the next 72 hours absorbing everything he could find on the 100-year-old landmark.

“I read everything I could read about the history and what Mrs. Ahmanson did,” he said. “I watched Jay and Denise on YouTube videos, talking about various functions of the hotel. I read almost every detail of each of the 40 themed rooms. I just read everything I could get my hands on.”

Vickie Maxwell, who was visiting the hotel for the first time Wednesday, said she felt like she already knew the place.

“I’ve heard everything and seen everything,” she said. “From the very first day when he found it online, he followed me through the house with a laptop. So I kind of had a feeling this would happen.”

Their enthusiasm for the old hotel, originally built in 1913 and now listed on the National Register of Historic Places, was unfeigned.

“What you have here — and I know you know this — is a jewel. It’s so great,” Tom said.

The Maxwells’ vision for the hotel appears to square with the Hartzes’.

“I want to maintain the integrity of the hotel as it is,” Tom said. “I want to grow it, if I can, but I want it to be what it is for the town of Perry and for the community. I don’t want to change that. I want to build on that.”

Maxwell praised the hard work the Hartzes devoted to the business.

“Jay and Denise did a tremendous job of taking it from where it was to where it is,” he said. “I would like to renew a little energy and try to take it to another level if it can. What I mean by that is possibly more rooms sold and more activity in our restaurant and maybe more meetings booked. That’s really all we can do within the hotel.”

Vickie owns and operates two dance studios and is a busy entrepreneur in her own right — “”She works harder than anybody I know,” Tom said — so relocating to Perry is not planned at present.

“We’re not going to technically live here,” Tom said, “but I’m going to be up here a lot, probably 10 to 15 days every month.” Their two children, ages 23 and 20, are living on their own and in their own homes.

“It’s a good time for me,” Tom said. “It’s an opportunity for me to give a lot of focus and attention to the hotel.”

Under the Hartzes’ leadership, the hotel saw gross sales in 2016 of more than $2 million, an occupancy rate of 52 percent and an average daily rate of $127. The Hotel Pattee underwent a $14 million renovation in the late 1990s and now boasts a state of the art bowling alley, a restaurant and lounge, a full service spa and fitness center, four meeting and events spaces and 40 individually appointed guest accommodations.

The details of the impending sale have not been disclosed, but the hotel was listed in July at $2.5 million.

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