To Table of Contents want to be humble about it , because we know that we ' re about to do something no one ' s done before , we know that people with disabilities are going to show up and correct us . We think we ' ve thought of everything but they will say : Well , what about this , and that , and we ' re not going to fight them . This is literally a teaching exercise . It ' s a showcase for the rest of the world and we ' ve already started to make relationships with what we would call mainstream hotels , just like we did with the mainstream banks 15 years ago . So right now , while the rest of the organization continues to do its thing , we have the lending and we have the equity investments , our prized possession right now is our relationship with White Sulphur Springs , and then clearly our biggest investment , our biggest , exciting new thing that ' s never ever been tried before , is this hotel .
We ’ re converting a 109-yearold building that was once a high school into a hotel but we are not changing the character of the building . It isn ’ t about knocking it down and putting up a traditional hotel like a Holiday Inn or Hampton Inn , which would have been easy to do . We ’ re trying to maintain that building , which meant less rooms , taking a huge gymnasium and turning it into a wedding / conference venue , figuring out where to put a restaurant , a bar and everything else , all ADA compliant within this old building , but being DOF , we do things that no one else has ever done before and the result will be the fully-accessible Schoolhouse Hotel .
We consulted with experts through every aspect of the design phase - experts from the visually impaired world , from the hard of hearing / deaf world , from the IDD world , physical disabilities , etc ., and we ' ve incorporated their recommendations in