The closed Wishing Well Motor Inn in Springfield, Missouri, is slated to be demolished because it’s no longer habitable and has become a nuisance. But the president of the Route 66 Association of Missouri hopes the motel’s sign can be salvaged and restored.
The motel at 3550 W. Chestnut Expressway (aka Route 66) was owned by Chris Gatley and his notorious 417 Rentals in Springfield. The real-estate company owns about 500 rental properties in Springfield, and the city has received more than 1,500 complaints from the firm’s tenants since 2014. Dozens of Gatley’s properties are being foreclosed amid a bankruptcy filing. Gatley also was shot in January and hospitalized for weeks.
Since residents at the Wishing Well were evicted, many of them are living in a wooded area behind the motel in a homeless encampment. The city is slated to tear down the building and clear the homeless camp.
Roamin’ Rich Dinkela, the new president of the Route 66 Association of Missouri, said in a Facebook Live video he realizes the motel is doomed but he thinks its 1960s-era sign should be saved:
An interesting thing the Wishing Well is the “Motor Inn” neon portion of the sign disappeared between 2007 and 2012, replaced by “Weekly,” “Monthly” and “Kitchenettes,” according to archived images on Google Street View.
According to a former real-estate listing by ReMax Commercial, the Wishing Well Motor Inn was built about 1950. The late Skip Curtis’ “The Missouri Route 66 Tour Book” pegged the construction to 1947. The 1994 book also stated the “once popular” wishing well was “long gone.”
Anthony Reichardt, now well known for his 1959 Cadillac on Route 66 videos shot during the 1990s, recently posted several photos and vintage postcards of the motel on Facebook. Reichardt stayed in the motel in 1995, which he said still “looked clean” but devolved into a “hooker haven” as night fell.
The postcards Reichart put on Facebook also show the Wishing Well went through several versions of neon signs during its history.
In the meantime, Dinkela urges Route 66 advocates to contact the city’s aldermen (an email may be found on this page) and request the sign be saved from the wrecking ball for a museum or a neon-sign park.
(Image of the Wishing Well Motor Inn sign in Springfield, Missouri, via ReMax Commercial listing)
Thank you to local resident Andrea Toombs for flagging this up on a Route 66 Facebook group and bringing it to people’s attention.