Score one for the preservationists.
The Lincoln Courier reports this afternoon that ownership of the dilapidated, long-closed The Mill restaurant on Route 66 in Lincoln, Ill., will be transferred to the fledgling Route 66 Heritage Foundation of Logan County so it can be eventually restored.
The current owner of The Mill is Dennis Koehler, who hadn’t maintained the property for years and faced a $32,000 fine because of it. In exchange for the property transfer, the fine will be expunged. City Hall has signed off on this, so it looks like the efforts to restore the property are a go.
… Work will be completed in two phases – one a relatively short, inexpensive undertaking to clean up the original building and to beautify the property with landscaping and some exterior improvements. The final phase, a complete restoration of the structure, is estimated to take several years and require a large investment.
And I’m certain the Illinois Route 66 Association and its active preservation committee will be behind a lot of the elbow grease.
More about The Mill can be read here.
UPDATE: Copley News Service also has the story.
UPDATE2: The Bloomington Pantagraph has a story, too.