The Bluff City Inn is named after Eufala, built on a bluff.

With more than 700 buildings on the National Register of Historic Places, the small southern town of Eufaula, Ala., has the state's second-largest historic district.

So it was something of a shock when the town's historic preservation commission voted unanimously earlier this month to allow a project requiring the demolition of the 1885 Bluff City Inn to move forward.

"It was a hard decision," says Ann Sparks, director of Eufaula's Main Street Program. "When they first told me, it felt like someone had kicked me in the stomach."

Inn owner William Hitson, who purchased the property last December, presented a plan to the commission for a four-story replica of the inn, housing 60 hotel rooms and retail space, to be built on the site. Initial plans show a new brick building about three feet taller than the current three-story structure. Several additions to the building will also be demolished to make room for a parking structure.

"It's not the outcome that a lot of preservations would have liked to see in Eufaula," says Doug Purcell, a former member of the commission who voted in favor of the project. The vote was not entirely surprising, Purcell says. "The building has been a topic of conversation for the last 15 to 20 years," he says. "In the meantime, the building was slowly coming down, and the former owner was not spending the money to maintain it."

Though the building still houses several businesses on the ground floor, the upper floors of the inn have been empty since the late 1960s. A recent study of the building revealed serious damage from a fire in 1944 that had not been completely repaired, as well as other structural issues.

The city's chamber of commerce and Main Street program both passed resolutions in favor of the project after seeing the condition of the building. "Once you go through it and see all of it up close, there's no doubt," Sparks says. "We have to have something done with it." She points out that since the town hosts 52 fishing tournaments a year, the hotel rooms are badly needed.

Purcell says that over the years, several developers looked at renovating the property, which sits in the center of the town's historic district, but backed away because of the cost. "There were some significant foundation problems that would have been extremely expensive to take care of."

No permits have been issued yet, but the Bluff City Inn will likely be demolished in six months.

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