Over the past year and a half, Douglass has watched the old hotel undergo a face-lift that has restored, and even surpassed, the building's former condition. What a fantastic addition that's going to be to the downtown area of Fowlerville. May. The restoration included construction of six upstairs apartments and one barrier-free unit on the ground floor. Some have built-in wooden bookshelves, some have pillars. They're very uptown looking.
Every unit is just very unique.
It ended up being a bigger challenge than we thought it would. Thornburgh said the structure was built in 1901, to replace an earlier hotel that had burned down on the same site. The roof was collapsing. The brick was getting brittle, and it had to be tuck-pointed with new mortar between the bricks. We had to reinforce the building with steel beams and replace the roof.