Springfield city government wants to replace an old bridge off Main Avenue downtown and bring Jordan Creek out of its underground channels into daylight, a multimillion-dollar project. The goal is to get investors downtown and improve stormwater flooding.
City staff have acquired all the necessary real estate except for one property: The Hotel of Terror. The city is now trying to use eminent domain to force an acquisition of that building. Sterling Mathis owns the place. He told City Council he’s ready to move the Hotel of Terror to another property. The problem is money.
"All I’m wanting to do is move to the other place," Mathis said Monday night. "There’s — like one of my guys told me earlier, there’s like a handful of people in the country that can build haunted houses. There’s more people that can take appendixes out than build haunted houses. We’ve been doing this a long time. I don’t mind moving. The problem is I can’t do it for half of what they’re telling me I’m going to have to take, or they’re going to take my property.”
The Springfield News-Leader reported Monday that the city’s offer for the Hotel of Terror recently stood at $500,000.
