The Potter Block building has been abandoned for around 30 years, now the town is working on renovating it into a brand new hotel, "The Hotel Garber".

Red Cloud attracts many tourist because of rich history, recreational activities, and because of places like the National Willa Cather Center.

“A lot of people come to the National Willa Cather Center and they end up staying in Hastings or Grand Island," said Director, Red Cloud Tourism and Commerce and chair of the Community Fund, Jarrod McCartney. "We are giving a lot of our lodging money to those communities."

The new hotel would be a 26-Room Boutique Hotel with a luxury apartment on the top floor.

“We have the construction documents done, we will get that started at the end of the year," McCartney said.

The renovation of the Potter Block Building will include many details from the original construction. The basement, which used to be a barbershop decades ago, will be rebuild into a conference room for about 54 people.

The town hopes to have the hotel ready either by fall 2023, or spring 2024.

Red Cloud is hopeful to receive around $732,000 in Historic Preservation Grants from the state, which would allow them to make the building designed much more historic.

Local residents are also doing building renovations, like Dennis and Sally Hansen, who are renovating the Peterson Building, a place that used to be a hardware store and has been abandoned for about four years.

“We actually live in the farm currently and some day we want to move into town, and rather than buying a house we decided to renovate the building," Dennis said. "We will live upstairs and rent out the retail space down below."

The couple hopes to separate the lower floor into two different retail spaces. They will also re-build the place next to the corner building, which is currently an empty lot.

A brand new business is about to open its doors in Red Cloud. Next week, Todd and Lisa Mahin will officially open Back Alley Bicycles.

“Me and my husband, and our boys, we like to travel a lot, and we had rented bicycles where we had traveled and always thought it was fun and a great idea," Lisa said. "We thought it would be something fun and new to offer in Red Cloud."

Todd's father used to have the local barbershop right where Back Alley Bicycles is now located.

Currently they have a selection of men, women and youth cruisers, and expect in the future to offer mountain bikes and speed bikes as well.

Many different projects are currently happening in Red Cloud, as the town's Recreation and Health Sub-Committee is also working on creating a walking path in the town.

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“We figured out that the only people that can built a community are the ones that live there," Dennis said.

To learn more about all the buildings in Red Cloud visit this website.