Artspace

Kaddatz Artist Lofts

111 W. Lincoln Avenue
Fergus Falls, Minnesota 56537

Opened 2004

A main street landmark

For years the Hotel Kaddatz was the leading hostelry in Fergus Falls, a west central Minnesota community of 13,000. Among its attractions was a restaurant where, in 1927, one Gus Comstock made headlines by establishing a world record for coffee-drinking: 85 cups in three hours and 10 minutes. During Prohibition, a speakeasy flourished in the Kaddatz basement. But in the 1960s, when Interstate 94 opened on the south edge of Fergus Falls, the city expanded in that direction; in 1975, the Kaddatz closed its doors.

Artspace's $2.4 million renovation created 10 units of mixed income housing on the building's upper two floors, 6,000 square feet of commercial space on the ground floor, and, on the lower level, an art gallery operated by A Center for the Arts, Fergus Falls' civic arts organization. The hotel's grand staircase, sealed off by an earlier remodeling, was restored and extended to the lower level as well.