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St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Lee Enterprises

Monday, March 26, 2007 10:36 PM CDT
Oakland fire deals serious blow to efforts to bring back bed and breakfast

By ROB STROUD, Staff Writer
rstroud@jg-tc.com

OAKLAND -- Efforts to bring a bed and breakfast back to Oakland have been dealt a serious blow by the fire Saturday that destroyed the former Inn on the Square.

Oakland Chamber of Commerce President Kyle Phillips said property owner Richard Puski, who had used the former inn as a private residence, had just put the house on the market a week and a half ago as a potential bed and breakfast.

Phillips said the chamber had planned to assist Puski with marketing the former inn, which had been Oakland’s only lodging business.

“Our hopes were to get someone in there to run it as a bed and breakfast,” Phillips said.

A proprietor of a bed and breakfast could have opened for business in the former Inn on the Square with little difficulty, Phillips said. Opening an inn at a new site in Oakland would take a much larger financial investment, he said.

Oakland Fire Chief John Henry said an investigator from the Illinois State Fire Marshall’s Office listed the cause of the fire as being undetermined. Henry said the fire started with an explosion in the basement of the former inn.

Henry said the Oakland department received much appreciated help from Charleston, Kansas, Ashmore, Brocton, Newman and Hindsboro firefighters in containing and extinguishing the blaze.

Henry said the large fire at the former inn brought more firefighters from other departments to town than he and his fellow Oakland volunteers had ever seen there. He said the Oakland firefighters planned to meet Monday evening to identify any firefighting equipment that may have been inadvertently left behind by other departments.

“We are going to sort that and get it back to them,” Henry said.

The bed and breakfast in the building closed in June 2005 after owners Gary and Linda Miller sold it. It first opened as an inn and tea room in 1986.

The house was also a private residence from 1878 to 1958, occupied by the Stanley Cash family and its descendants. A Cash family member bought the house in 1977 and remodeled it.

Contact Rob Stroud at rstroud@jg-tc.com or 348-5734.

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Kevin Kilhoffer (JG/T-C)

An interior view from the doorway of the Inn on the Square in Oakland on Monday afternoon.