Klamath Falls gets grant to upgrade Arcade Hotel

A century-old Klamath Falls hotel has a new lease on life since the recent award of grant money for its restoration.

The Klamath Falls Downtown Association received a $200,000 Oregon Main Street Revitalization Grant to help restore and eventually reopen the 100-year-old Arcade Hotel.

It is one of several projects in Southern Oregon receiving a state revitalization grant, including the Malmgren Garage building in Talent, which burned in the Almeda fire.

It also was announced that Forefathers Capital, an investment and development group that includes a Klamath Falls resident, completed its purchase of the Arcade property, at 1032 Main St., and will begin work to restore the property for its historical use as a hotel. The building has sat dormant in downtown Klamath Falls for many years.

Darin Rutledge, the downtown association’s executive director, said Forefathers owns other properties in the Klamath Falls area and has experience in developing hotel properties and working with historical buildings. The grant will provide capital for the initial stages of a multimillion dollar renovation effort expected to be completed in 2023. When complete, the property will be reopened as a 22-room boutique hotel.

“This will be a transformational project for downtown Klamath Falls and represents the first significant historic preservation project in downtown Klamath Falls in over two decades” Rutledge said.

Robbie Janda, spokesperson for Forefathers Capital, said the company is enthusiastic about the project. “We are thrilled to have been given the opportunity to revitalize such an important landmark in downtown Klamath Falls. The (grant) was an essential part of getting this project off the ground, and without it another piece of history would likely have been lost.”

The downtown association evaluated a number of potential projects to include in its grant application, but the Arcade Hotel “stood out as the project that would be most competitive.”

“This project checks all the boxes that this grant program is built on — saving a historic building, catalyzing community investment, creating jobs, increasing property value and tax revenue and creating vibrancy in our downtown,” said Kendall Bell, grant writer and chair of the downtown association’s design committee. “It will also provide a new lodging product that is unique in Klamath County.”

The grant fund was authorized by the Oregon Legislature in 2015 to provide capital to stimulate downtown revitalization projects around the state. It was first funded in 2017 with a $2.5 million allocation, which was increased to $5 million in 2019. The fund was replenished with a $10 million allocation in 2021 to support a “catch-up” cycle for 2022 and the regular grant cycle in 2023. Creation of the fund and its succeeding allocations are the result of grassroots advocacy efforts on behalf of Oregon Main Street organizations, such as KFDA.

Grant awards are made every two years in odd years, although the allocation in 2021 included an additional $5 million for 2022 since the allocation was postponed during the pandemic. KFDA has received a grant award in all three cycles to date. Grants in 2017 and 2019 supported upper floor redevelopment projects that resulted in 25 new residential units in downtown Klamath Falls.

The Arcade’s History

The Arcade Hotel, at 1032 Main St., in downtown Klamath Falls, opened in May 1920, according to the Oregon Inventory of Historic Properties.

The cost of building the four-story, brick hotel in the Chicago School style was $40,000. Architect A.F. Heide designed plans for the 52-room hotel in mid-1919, and construction began immediately afterward. The Arcade’s owners were George and Christos Blanas.

George Blanas, who was born in 1900 in Tripoli, Greece, and his brother Christos moved to Klamath Falls in 1916. A third brother, Nicholas, later joined them.

After the main building of the Arcade was completed, the Blanas brothers in 1923 added a four-story brick building to the original hotel at a cost of $20,000. The addition, connected to the main hotel by a covered walkway, was demolished Dec. 10, 1998. The Blanas family maintained and operated the Arcade for about 50 years.

According to his obituary, George Blanas died July 14, 1998, in Boise, Idaho, at age 98.

Reach freelance writer Lee Juillerat at 337lee337@charter.net or 541-880-4139.