The Mimosa building that stands partially deteriorating in downtown Pullman hasn’t served brunch or drinks in decades. As the focus of local contention, it still seems to leave a bitter taste in some residents’ mouths.
Once the location of a local restaurant named the Mimosa Cafe, a large flood in 1996 resulted in the restaurant’s closure. Since then, the building has sat empty along Main St. for decades.
This summer, the building saw its first paint job since being flooded; however, the fresh coat of crimson and gray paint that now coats the building is not a signal of a new business to come.
“It’s an ugly building, it is…if you look around Pullman, there are a lot of ugly buildings, and there are a lot of vacant buildings. I don’t know what people wanted us to do. I mean do something with it, obviously…we just didn’t, and it’s a very expensive endeavor to remodel something and get it usable…the shell of the building is solid, but the inside is gutted down to the studs, and it would take a lot of money to, you know, make it really usable,” the building’s owner Nancy Swanger said.
According to Swanger, while the cost of revamping the exterior of the building cost her and her husband around $15,000, the renovation is cosmetic only and meant to ease community frustration.
“People just want to make us out to be the bad guys, because we have an ugly building…I guess we did our part and painted the building, so that would be one less thing people would have to complain about as they looked up and down the street,” Swanger said.
According to Swanger, the only reason she and her husband purchased the property was due to the attached parking lot, the only parking lot on Main St.
“That parking lot has always been there and we wanted a place for our customers to be able to park,” said Swanger, a longtime business owner in the Palouse. “We often joke that we bought a parking lot and it just happened to have an old building attached to it.”
According to Swanger, because the property’s true value lies in its parking, the couple has never felt that investing in a business in the old building made financial sense…and they have no plans to do so in the future, regardless of public backlash on the building’s appearance.
“We, but primarily me, have taken a lot of grief over the years…people say mean things and, you know, are quite accusatory, and they don’t even know me. I guess, painting the outside of the building, to try to calm people down, I guess,” Swanger said.
The Swangers are currently in their 60s and are no longer interested in making a business investment to bring something new to the building. Despite not actively listing the building for sale, for the right price, the Swangers are willing to get rid of the old Mimosa, said Nancy.
According to Nancy, for now, the Mimosa will remain closed. With no brunch, no drinks, and no customers inside, the paint job is only meant to make one of Pullman’s most talked-about buildings look a little less sour.
