People who will stay in some of those rooms and who look out from the large ballroom that Spooky Nook officials informally call “the wedding room” also will look out those historic windows onto the Great Miami River, in what will be one of Butler County’s most iconic viewscapes.
“We’re expecting those (window) deliveries to begin in the first half of July,” Spooky Nook owner Sam Beiler told the Journal-News.
The first windows will be installed shortly after that, in hotel rooms where the drywall has been finished, he said.
“We’re really happy with the appearance of Mill 2 (the part between B Street and the river) and Mill 1 (the buildings west of B Street) from B Street,” Beiler recently said. “We believe the historic characteristics of both buildings will be such that some of the old folks that might come by and remember working there are going to actually remember days of when the windows still were in there.
“But those guys will be pretty old.”
He has said the complex will be a salute to the former paper that is beloved by many Butler County residents who once worked there or had relatives who did. Plans include large images inside of Hamilton and its history.
In addition to adding the historic windows, crews have been making other improvements Beiler believes people will like.
Brick that was designed to match “in relative terms,” the existing Champion mill bricks along B Street are being added to newer walls, he said.
A week and a half ago, he said 85 percent of the hotel rooms had been framed, with 75 percent of them drywalled, “so those hotel rooms, they’re really moving along.”
Beiler referred to the ballroom as “a wedding room that we hope is used for many, many other purposes — I hesitate to even call it a wedding room,” he added with a laugh.
That room will be separated from other parts of the complex, so the only people walking past it will be people attending events there.
“And the views from up there are really spectacular,” he said.
Officials have said the phrase “B Street canyon” was coined by Hamilton architect Mike Dingeldein of the CORE (Consortium for Ongoing Reinvestment Efforts) Fund, which has been probably the city’s greatest force in returning life to buildings in the downtown area and along Main Street that were vacant.
Local historian Brian Lenihan, who has written about Hamilton buildings, said he was pleased the former mill’s windows will look like they once were.
“I’m looking forward to it. I’m excited about it,” Lenihan said. “I think it’s a very positive thing.”
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