Photo by  SAMANTHA WHITE

The motel will be converted into short-term lodging units, serving the community’s short-term housing needs and bringing more tourism to Burns’ “Main Street”.

Oregon Heritage, a division of Oregon Parks and Recreation Department, awarded a $200,000 grant to the Burns Main Street Task Force to assist in the renovation of the Bon Temps Motel on the corner of Broadway Avenue and Monroe Street, which has been vacant for the last 15 years.  

The financial partner for this grant is the Harney County Opportunity Team. The property is owned by Tom and Becky Anderson, both fourth-generation Oregon natives, who reside in Boise, Idaho. The funds will be used to renovate the roof, install new plumbing and electrical systems, and add windows. 

The motel will be converted into short-term lodging units, serving the community’s short-term housing needs and bringing more tourism to Burns’ “Main Street”. The project serves the overall Burns Main Street Task Force goals of ameliorating blighted areas in downtown Burns and bringing more customers to downtown businesses.  

This is the third award to this organization in the last five years. In 2017, the Main Street Task Force was awarded $100,000, which funded a portion of The Central Hotel’s renovation. In 2019, the Burns Main Street Task Force was awarded $200,000 to restore the southern half of North Broadway’s eastern block, between Washington and Adams Streets. This included the buildings where Spark Collaborative and Alden’s Leather School are housed. It also included the Voegtly building — a 120-year-old, two-story brick building that will be the future home of a shared workspace called The Foundry Collective. The top will house professional offices.

The Oregon Parks and Recreation Department funded applications throughout the state that best conveyed the ability to stimulate private investment and local economic development, and best fit within the community’s long-range plan for downtown vitality and community need. 

The grant program was created during the 2015 legislative session and placed with the Oregon State Historic Preservation Office. The legislation established a permanent fund for the Oregon Main Street Revitalization Grant and provided an initial infusion of funds from the sale of lottery bonds. The legislature included the Oregon Main Street Revitalization Grant in the lottery bond package approved in 2021. An additional grant round will occur in 2023. The funds must be used to award grants to participating Oregon Main Street Network organizations to acquire, rehabilitate, or construct buildings to facilitate community revitalization.