Ginkgo Tree Inn & Riverbluff Bistro opens; first overnight occupancy facility downtown in decades

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Just over a year ago, Jean Prout’s newly-opened inn wasn’t much more than what she called “a little white box” at the north end of downtown Mount Pleasant.

Owner of the building that houses the district’s Centennial Hall, 306 W. Michigan St., the Shepherd resident wasn’t quite satisfied with her 23 years in the banqueting business and was in need of a new project. She said a now former city employee showed her the early 20^th century residence, 309 N. Main St., when everything clicked.

“I’ve always wanted to run a (bed and breakfast). I guess that’s the main point,” Prout said. “I love B & B’s. This house came along, and I thought this would be perfect. But I took it the next step. Why just do a bed and breakfast? So we did the bed and bistro.”

The Ginkgo Tree Inn & Riverbluff Bistro opened in November after about 11 months of refurbishing and reconstruction.

It is the first overnight occupancy facility in the downtown district in several decades, which put Prout through some legwork last year in seeking city approval of a special use permit to construct the inn, as it was in a region that wasn’t zoned for it.

In November, city commissioners approved an ordinance that would allow them to consider other overnight facilities downtown, though there was some concern over how it could affect its aesthetics.

Before the consolidation of chain hotels, Jack Westbrook, president of the Mount Pleasant Area Historical Society, said 1950s motels carried a kind of stigma that may have contributed to the city eventually writing hotels out of downtown’s zoning.

“I think the reason for the ordinance banning downtown hotels was that was the era when motels … some of them were sort of seedy,” he said. “Town fathers didn’t want the potential of the visual blight.”

There had been two primary hotels — the Park and the Bennett — that had served visitors throughout Mount Pleasant’s time as an oil boomtown in the 1920s and 1930s. He said both hotels were out of business and demolished by the early 1960s.

Prout’s house was “gutted” of its original electrical and plumbing systems. Prout said additional elements, such as a small turret, were added to its original structure. Only the building’s original woodwork, she said, remains in the house.

Because of this, she said it doesn’t carry any official historical value, unlike other buildings in the region. However, she said she still wanted her inn to have the same feel, as it comes with its own documented history.

Business is faring well, she said, though not with quite as wide a demographic range as she expected.

“I thought we would attract everybody,” she said. “But we seem to be attracting 30 and older.”

The inn is open for lunch and dinner Tuesday through Saturday, she said, and already has plans to host weddings this summer, by which time she hopes to have an outdoor eating area finished.

She also owns the two properties that border the inn and hopes in a two- and five-year span, respectively, to have separately developed into condominiums that match.