After a soft opening earlier this year, the Hotel Hale, the latest addition to Bathhouse Row in Hot Springs National Park, had its grand opening Tuesday morning.
Located in the Hale Bath House, which the National Park Service says is at least the fourth building to bear that name, the Hotel Hale features luxurious sleeping accommodations on the top floor and two restaurants, Eden, which offers fine dining, and Zest, which offers a more relaxed atmosphere, on the first floor, according to its website.
Following a brief presentation, Hot Springs Mayor Pat McCabe, who leased the bath house from the Park Service with his wife, Ellen, gave a tour of the boutique hotel.
"It is my honor to be able to welcome our newest partner to Bathhouse Row, the Hotel Hale," Hot Springs National Park Superintendent Laura Miller told the crowd gathered for Tuesday's grand opening.
"The Hale Bath House has the distinction of being the oldest structure still standing on Bathhouse Row," said Miller, who noted the current building was built in 1892 and received its first major renovation in 1914 at a cost of $50,000, or around $1.2 million in modern dollars.
The building continued to serve the community as a bath house until it went out of business in 1978.
"The National Park Service long had, as our goal, to reopen and restore these beautiful buildings and make them available to our visitors once again. And thanks to Pat and Ellen McCabe and all our partners on Bathhouse Row, today we've moved another huge step forward to that goal of getting them all reopened," Miller said.
Tracy Simmons, chief of Commercial Services and Leasing for the Midwest Region of the National Park Service in Ohama, Neb., also spoke, noting that she spent Monday night in a room at the Hale, calling it a "wonderful experience."
Simmons said that, in July 2013, the Park Service released a request for proposals for the Hale. In January 2014, the idea for the hotel/restaurant was returned and in 2017, the Park Service signed a lease with the McCabes.
"We are now today seeing the hard work, the results, of that lease," Simmons said.
Speaking on behalf of U.S. Rep. Bruce Westerman, R-District 4, field representative and project coordinator Julie Williams said Westerman regretted missing the event, but sent his congratulations on successfully opening the Hotel Hale.
McCabe thanked a number of people, including Westerman and the Park Service and joked that he probably set a record with the agency for number of extensions.
He also thanked Robert Kempkes and W. Chris Sheppard with Taylor Kempkes Architects, PA.
"They did a great job for us. I remember the very first time Ellen and I walked down Bathhouse Row with Bob and Anthony (Taylor) ... in September of 2013 to outline what our thoughts were for a business opportunity on Bathhouse Row, and we checked out this bath house and the Ozark, and we described what we wanted, and this was just a shell ... and they went to work. And then we brought in Mike Harrison with Harrison Construction, and Mike did a great job," McCabe said.
Roxanne Butterfield, president of the Friends of Hot Springs National Park, told The Sentinel-Record after the presentation she thinks the reopening of the Hale is fabulous.
"Every time we have a bath house open, it is new life in our park, it's fabulous," she said, noting the park only has "one more bath house to go," referring to the vacant Maurice Bath House.
Local on 08/21/2019