Return To Grandeur Couple Renovate 1906 Apartment Building, Make Some Units Into Suites For Visiting Executives
Sarah and Michael Michalko grew tired of working long hours for someone else, so they decided to work long hours for themselves.
“I’d like to say we were very insane,” said Michael Michalko, a New Jersey transplant via the Air Force.
The insanity he talks about involved buying a gritty, run-down apartment building on the corner of Sixth Avenue and Washington Street and restoring it.
“It was mostly low-income tenants, elderly and students when we bought it,” he said.
The Michalkos said they paid $540,000 for the building and to date have spent nearly $1 million in restoration costs.
In July, The Kempis, with 24 suites, opened its doors to extended-stay business travelers and those in search of a unique getaway on the edge of downtown.
There are 15 executive suites and nine permanent apartments, two of which are still available.
The Michalkos describe the lodgings at 326 W. Sixth as a combination hotel and bed and breakfast.
Room rates start at $175 and top out at $275, depending upon the length of stay. The longer the stay, the cheaper the rate, Michael Michalko said.
The hardwood floors glisten. The trickle of an indoor fountain lulls. And a three-story enclosed courtyard is bathed in light from a new skylight.
Spokane artist Michael Connerly is creating a series of murals to match the hotel’s turn-of-the-century furnishings. Connerly is known for his restoration of the Davenport Hotel’s embellishments.
Each suite at The Kempis is furnished with turn-of-the-century antiques, claw-foot bathtubs and oriental rugs, as well as a full kitchen, microwave and air conditioner.
Guests may use the hotel’s business conference room, computers, fax machine and workout facilities.
It took two years to renovate The Kempis from the ground up.
“We thought we could do it one floor at a time,” Michael Michalko said.
“But then we lived there after we first bought it and discovered the wiring was bad, the plumbing was bad, the windows were bad - and we realized we had to do everything.”
Before the couple bought the building, they saved their money. Both worked at jobs in restoration and construction.
“Washington Trust was our main funding source for the project,” he said. “We quit our jobs but not before we had saved up and made sure we were able to live on that.”
Why did the Michalkos undertake such an extensive project?
Because the couple loves old buildings and because the East Coast, where they hail from, is full of old buildings, many of which have been restored to their former grandeur.
The 1906 building was once an elegant apartment house for Spokane’s well-to-do. But through the years its grandeur declined and the city’s upper crust went elsewhere.
The Kempis became apartments. Pulling up the orange shag rugs and carpet tacks and then scraping up the carpet tar, the Michalkos discovered oak and maple floors in the apartments and a mosaic of tiny inlaid tiles in the building’s enclosed courtyard.
“This is our job. We’ve been doing this seven days a week, 24 hours a day,” Sarah Michalko said.
When the restoration is finished sometime in December, the Michalkos hope to open a small but elegant restaurant in the southwest corner of the building.
In September, The Kempis will offer a shuttle to and from the airport for its guests. But not just any shuttle - a Rolls Royce.
In the meantime, the building restoration continues, including sprucing up the gold lion’s head that guards the hotel’s southwest corner, and touchups to the outside of the hotel and parking area.
“The landscaping is new,” Michael Michalko said. “It was matty and weedy grass before.”
Even the couple’s 17-month old son is in line for putting in a few hours at The Kempis. “We’re going to buy him a hammer set,” he said.
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo