The Lyons Twin Mansions started out as a single mansion catering to bed and breakfast clients, but has evolved into a boutique hotel.  Pat Lyons said that the younger generation of customers prefer the freedom of choosing when, what and if they eat. The traditional approach of making one big breakfast for all the guests didn’t work well with the changes in the market. This required a shift away from serving a family style breakfast to a restaurant oriented service and led to the opening of a restaurant in the South mansion.

See below to enter the Lyon’s Twin Mansion Month of Brunch Giveaway!

Not only does this provide guests with an experience more in line with the needs of todays visitors, but it also provides locals with a wonderful place to eat breakfast and lunch in a unique historic setting.

The restaurant is open for walk in service 9 to 2 Tuesday through Friday and 8 to 2 on the weekends and there is no need to make reservations. The full-service lounge is open from 5 to 8pm on Thursdays and Fridays and while there is no kitchen service during those hours, customers are welcome to carry in food.

The kitchen is run by Nate Lyons and Pete Collins while Marianne Avett serves the tables. The setting is designed to be quiet and relaxing and every item on the menu is priced below $10 (sunrise menu, midday menu). Miss Pat said that the goal was to provide great food at a reasonable price and to get people to come and enjoy a comfortable environment that encourages visitors to stay and visit.

The back room of the restaurant has a pool table setup and ready for a game. Across the hall from the main dining area in the library is a large screen television that Miss Pat says the kids enjoy when parents want to stay and talk for awhile.

For business people, the large tables and quiet environment in the dining area make it an idea place to talk with clients or just get out of the office for a meeting. For larger groups or when more privacy is necessary, there are meeting areas available. Miss Pat said, “Our meeting space is free if you dine with us.” Additionally both mansions have wireless internet access, large screens, digital projectors, and phone conference equipment available for use.

The Lyons Mansions also offers free tours and Miss Pat said that it is a great place for locals to bring visiting out of towners who are interested in hearing about some of the history in the area.

The Lyon’s Twin Mansion Restaurant is offering a special give away to subscribers of FortScott.Biz. They are offering a “Month of Brunch.” The winner will be chosen from subscribers to FortScott.Biz and will be given coupons for a weekly brunch meal at the restaurant for the month (taxes not included). So make sure you signup by clicking here if you don’t already get our emails.

We’ll draw a winner in a week. Be sure to watch your emails because you’ll have 48 hours to respond before we select a new winner.

Over a decade ago Mercy had a picnic in the park. I recently found a bunch of photographs I had taken of the event and thought some people in Fort Scott, might enjoy seeing them.

Click on any of the small images below to the larger image. Clicking on the larger image will take you to the next photo in the list. If you recognize someone, please consider emailing them a link or sharing it with them on Facebook.  Also don’t hesitate to leave a message in the comments on this post or the individual pictures.

 

 

 

This week’s Chamber Coffee was held at The Iron Star Antiques & Such at Main and Wall Street. The Iron Star is owned by Barbara Trimbure and is run as a coop with several  departments with both old and new items. One of the Iron Star’s specialties is taking old furniture and giving it new life. The upstairs in the building hosts the resale shop and they also have a section of baby gifts.

Barbara said the most people think that stores like the Iron Star get the majority of their sales from tourists, but in reality is it the local customers that keep coming back again and again. To cater to local customers, they are constantly changing things around and bringing in different items to keep the store fresh and interesting.

Barbara said that they will be having an open house on December 20th for last minute Christmas shoppers.

Other news and announcements:

The Gala Committee presented the Fort Scott Area Community Foundation with a check for $16,952. Two thirds of this came from the Gala and the rest came from a 50% matching program.

• The Citizen’s Bank Bowl has selected Trinity Valley Texas and Butler as the two teams for the Bowl game coming up on December 4th. (more details)
• Candlelight Tours at the Fort will be on December 2nd and 3rd. The theme is Fort Scott in 1861.
• The 300th performance of Life In A Jar will take place in Lebanon, MO at 6pm on December 4th.
• The Kiwanis Pancake feed will be on December 8th.
• The Beacon’ Christmas Adopt a Child program will be wrapping up this Friday.
• The Middle School is hosting their VIP Fall Extravaganza on November 21st. It is a “one-stop shopping and dining experience” and a great way to pickup some baked goods for Thanksgiving.

Seven employers had tables at the Fort Scott Job Fair at the performing arts building of FSCC today.  Here is a little about each company.

Carlisle

They didn’t want to say anything about their company without having it approved by their corporate office, but it is reasonable to assume they have at least one position open.

Klein

Klein makes water and fuel tanks that are then mounted on the back of large trucks. They are looking for welders, mechanics, drafts persons, and other positions. Klein is based in Fort Scott and the company has been around since the 1960s. They are looking for employees who can help them grow.

Epoch

Epoch is located in the old Western/Cigna building near Mercy Hospital. Epoch is part of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Kansas City. They process claims for Blue Cross and other companies. They have claims and data entry positions coming available and plan to hire 20 to 50 people in the next 3 or 4 months. They also plan to have some customer service positions open the second half of 2012.

Since examining claims is something that takes training, they are partnering with FSCC to create an online course to train claims examiners.

AZZ Atkinson

Atkinson is located in the industrial park in Pittsburg. They make custom enclosures for electrical and waste water treatment facilities. They have a number of floor positions open (electricians, welders, painters, etc.) as well as some office positions. They are looking to hire a total of 25 to 30 people. They are currently running a day shift of 7 to 3:30 Monday-Friday and are getting ready to start a night shift from 8:30p to 7am Sunday – Thursday.

Peerless

Peerless makes architectural windows and doors and is based in Fort Scott. They are looking for an IT Programmer and a Production Supervisor. Peerless touts their competitive pay, good benefits and stable business history as benefits to potential employees.

H & H Publishing

H & H publishes the Deadline and other advertising. They have current openings for sales associates and are looking to expand business in the near future. With their expansion they will need investigative reporters, sports writers and other writers.

Hospice Care of Kansas

Hospice Care of Kansas provides hospice services to people with terminal illness and support for their families. This includes medical help, but also involves bereavement support and even a summer camp for kids who have lost a loved one. They are currently looking for LPNs and RNs. They have two full time positions available, but there are many opportunities for people who want part time work.

They are also looking for volunteers who can sit with patients or help answer phones in the office.

Kansas Works

While not an employer, Kansas Works had a table at the job fair to let potential employees and employers know about their services. For employees they offer many self service tools via their website. These tools include job search and online resume listing services. There is also a Local Workforce Center in Pittsburg where job seekers can go to get help with their resume and job hunting skills.

Kansas Works also has a number of grants available that allow them to offer in greater assistant for people in certain situations. This can include training and education. In some cases they can even offer on the job training where employers are reimbursed for a portion of the wages they pay a new employee as they learn the skills of a new position.

Kansas Works also offers programs for at risk kids and youth to help them acquire work experience and  gain some of the soft skills necessary to pursue a job in the market.

For employers, they offer a number of services that can help provide grants and tax savings for organizations that are looking to hire. Since they work with a large number of prospective employees they can provide many services for free such as screening, recruitment, and advertising available positions.

The weekly Chamber Coffee was held at the VFW Post 1165 this morning. VFW Chairman Clint Walker told a little about what the VFW is doing in the community and thanked the businesses for their support.  The VFW sponsors a Voice of Democracy scholarship contest where high school students make an audio essay. Theresa Schafer won for the state of Kansas. (You can listen to her audio essay here.)  The VFW also sponsors a contest for middle school age children called Patriot Pen.

The flags that line the road to the National Cemetery are done by the VFW. Most of them are given in honor of someone. You can buy a flag in honor of a loved one for $35 through the VFW.  Mr. Walker said he would be setting up the flags at 7am tomorrow morning if anyone would like to come out and help.

Mr. Walker told the story of when he was working as a recruiter at the beginning of the first Gulf War. He said a 70 year old woman came in to show him a bag of medals and a newspaper clipping from her son who had died in World War II. The woman said that if she had it all to do over, she would give her son for America again.

A few other announcements that were made at the meeting:

• There two veteran’s programs tomorrow at 11am and 2pm at the National Cemetery.
• Jamie Armstrong announced that her Edward D. Jones office is going to be opening next to Subway on Thursday.
• Everything Pets will be opening on Saturday.
• The downtown Christmas open house (pdf) is tonight and many businesses will be staying open until 8.
• Life + Style will have a number of food samples available downtown tonight.
• The Kiwanis chili feed is tonight.
• Mercy has a chili cookoff on the 15th.
• The Citizen’s Bank Bowl will be played in Pittsburg on December 4th.
• The Chamber Community Guide is looking for content about local businesses.

 

 

There will be a job fair held at the FSCC Danny & Willa Ellis Fine Arts Center on Thursday, November 10th from 10am to 2pm. If you are looking for a job, put it on your calendar. If you know of anyone looking for a job, please let them know about it.

The flyer lists six companies that will be at the fair:

• Atkinson Industries from Pittsburg
• Carlisle Transportation Products
• The Epoch Group
• H&H Publishing
• Klein Products
• Peerless Products

There are over 20 positions listed. You can download the flyer from here: Job Fair Flyer – Fall 2011

Members of Fort Scott Disc Gunners took advantage of the warmer weather late Friday afternoon to play some disc golf in Gunn Park.The Gunn Park disc golf course was originally installed with 9 “holes” in 1999 and in more recent years has been upgraded to 18 holes. Most have a regular and alternate location and they are regularly shifted between these positions to add variety. The course length varies between 4908 ft. and 6375 ft. depending on the configuration.

 

Fort Scott has a reasonable number of choices for internet access.  Here is a list of what is available depending on exactly where you live.

• AT&T – DSL services provided over phone lines. Your lines can be further than 14,000 feet from the central office and some of the older lines won’t work.
• Suddenlink – Provided over cable connections. If you can get cable, you can probably gett this.
• RTS – Local wireless provider.
• Valnet – A wireless provider from Independence.
• Alpha Wireless – A new wireless provider in town. It isn’t clear if they are up and running yet or not.

That looks like quite a few options, but they all have one thing in common. They all get their bandwidth to Fort Scott from AT&T. So while there can be a certain amount of competition in how to connect your home, there is no competition in the underlying resource–access to the Internet.

Does this lack of competition drive the price up in Fort Scott? For comparison, I have a server in downtown Kansas City. For $50 per month I can get a 100 Mbps connection to the Internet. This would be enough bandwidth to let a local ISP supply reasonable service to a large number of customers. Now we’d expect that it would cost more to get a connection like that in Fort Scott than in Kansas City, but how much more? If it would cost 20 times more that would be $1,000 per month. Obviously that is more than what you’d want to put in your house, but it wouldn’t be out of reach for a business–particularly an ISP.

When I talked to AT&T about getting a connection like that, the initial price started out at around $39,266 per month. With a long contract and a special they were running, the price would come down to $31,333. After talking with a few different people, it sounded like there might be a way to cut that in half and get down to the $15,000 range. Still that is 300 times what bandwidth costs in downtown Kansas City. Could you imagine if your electric or telephone bill cost 300 times more than it costs in a larger city? Instead of a $90 per month electric bill, it would cost you $27,000 pre month. Instead of a $32 per month phone bill, it would cost $9,600.

If you were starting a business that required a reliable high speed connection to the Internet, would you go to the town where it costs $50 per month or the town where it costs $15,000? The future of small towns like Fort Scott is going to be very closely tied to their ability to tap into reliable inexpensive bandwidth. As long as everything comes through a single provider, there is no competition to drive the price down. Right now, no matter how many new ISPs start up in town, they are are all going to be reselling bandwidth from the same expensive source.

If Fort Scott wants to be competitive in the future, we are going to need to find ways to get competitively priced bandwidth into the city.

When Paul Feeney and his wife got to town last week to begin their project of turning the old middle school into a family entertainment location they found that the building wasn’t in the same condition they had left it. Vandals had broken in and gone through smashing most of the glass and spraying graffiti all over the walls. The floors were covered with broken glass and broken light bulbs.

There were quite a few things stolen as well including a nice weight machine and various equipment and tools. Many of the kitchen appliances were damaged and broken.  The vandals located some of the paint that had been stored by the previous owners and poured it out on the floor. A toilet had been pulled out of one of the rooms and thrown from the balcony in the auditorium.

Security cameras captured video of many of the miscreants and the police department is working on locating them.

All in all, it was a less than idea welcome to Fort Scott. Mr. Feeney said he briefly wondered if buying the building had been a big mistake, but after a few days of cleaning up the damage he is excited about the plans for the electric go-carts and other entertainment for the citizens of Fort Scott.

He still anticipates that the initial attractions should be opening in 2 or 3 years. The go carts will probably be put on the ground floor and the gym is the likely location for a climbing wall and possibly an indoor skateboard half-pipe.

He and his wife plan to live in the building and the tower in the center will be turned into an apartment with roof access and a great view of the city. Mr. Feeney said once he gets the glass cleaned up, his first priority is making sure the building is ready for winter and fixing any leaks in the roof that might lead to bigger problems later on. He said over all, the structure of the building seems pretty sound, but the roof has some leaks that need addressed–particularly in the center tower.

Another thing he is working on is getting a good inventory of what is actually in the building. He has found some unexpected surprises. There are a great number of what appears to be ceramic molds in what was once the cafeteria. It isn’t clear if those were put there by a previous owner or if they were part of the school. In a dark corner of the basement there are a number of canisters that appear to be rations and supplies from the cold war era.

The go carts that are planned for the building run on electric rechargeable batteries. Mr. Feeney expects the carts alone will cost somewhere around $200,000. He said his goal for the carts is to bring in enough to cover their operational costs and he is expecting to have a very hefty electric bill once things get going. He is less concerned about them bringing in enough to make money or even recover his initial investment.

Beyond the vandalism, there building has been left sitting for quite some time and is going to take some significant work. It appears that some previous owner may have removed much of the wiring to sell for scrap metal and the sump pumps in the boiler room haven’t been working so there is several feet of water in that area. There are many areas where the paint is peeling from the walls and plaster is falling off.

Despite all the work that is needed, Mr. Feeney’s enthusiasm is contagious and it is hard not to fall in love with the old building. Their goal of turning the school into an entertainment venue is going to require a lot of work, but it will be a great asset to the Fort Scott area and hopefully can serve as a model of what other communities can do with their large old buildings.