City resumes condemnation process on abandoned hotel

CAMBRIDGE, Idaho – The Hunters Inn, located at 10 S. Superior St. in downtown Cambridge, has once again been targeted for condemnation.

 During a regular city council meeting, held Monday, July 11, councilmembers agreed to resume the process based on the current owner’s failure to restore the building.

 The Weiser Signal American was not able to glean much information prior to publication but it is believed that the historic building was erected sometime in the early 1900s. It was previously earmarked for condemnation, but a Georgia woman stepped in and purchased the old hotel with the apparent intention of restoring it.

 Since that time, no work has been done on the property and it is unclear just how long it has been sitting vacant.

 “We began the condemnation process about a year ago because the guy who owned it, who lives in California, wasn’t able, or willing, to do anything with it,” explained Mayor Mark Loveland. “He was actually quite embarrassed that he left the city in a lurch like he did.”

 That’s when the unnamed woman from Georgia purchased the property.

 “Right when we started the process, she had some representatives come to one of our meetings, saying that she had purchased the property and was going to restore it,” Loveland said. “We gave her a list of what the building inspector said were deficiencies at that point, just from a safety point of view. 

 “She was supposed to resolve those safety issues right away. She was going to have a crew come in, but I called her three weeks ago, explaining that we gave her a year to do this stuff and that I needed to know what her plan was, but she never called me back, never made a plan, and the building still sits there.”

 Cambridge Museum volunteer, Sandra Hansen, said men with the Civilian Conservation Corps stayed at the hotel while working on area projects in the 1930s. The “CCC” was a voluntary government work relief program implemented during the Great Depression and ran through the beginning of World War II, in 1942.

 “I know that it was the place to go for boys working at the camps about three miles out of Cambridge,” she said. “Ma Wood and her husband ran it at that time, and they were very good to the boys.”

 Loveland said he would like to see someone invest in the property.

 “I would love it if she would come up and put money into that old building,” he said. “It’s an historic building but it’s in such bad shape, and if she isn’t going to do something in a timely manner, that’s not going to work for us. So, the council voted to re-engage the condemnation process of that structure.”