The Eldridge Hotel is changing its leadership approach.

The hotel’s owners are handling day-to-day operations at the downtown landmark now that the general manager they hired to lead the hotel’s reopening in May no longer is on the payroll.

Randy English, who came to Lawrence to turn around his fourth historic hotel, departed late last month. Many of his responsibilities now have fallen to Nancy Longhurst, a former Eldridge manager who is married to David Longhurst, one of the hotel’s owners.

“We’ve all sort of decided to go in a different direction,” said Susan Chaney, a member of the hotel’s ownership group. “Saying we’re going in a different direction is not necessarily saying that the hotel is going in a different direction. It’s the ownership group making some decisions in terms of wanting to move a little bit differently.

“I think it’ll be great, and we’re all excited about it. We’re all feeling great about everything. It’s all good.”

The 48-suite hotel reopened in May after a more than $2 million renovation. The property had fallen into bankruptcy under previous ownership, and the new owners bought the place at auction for $2.92 million.

The overhauled property opened to much fanfare in May, breathing new life into an 80-year-old building on a site that traces its lodging roots to the Free State Hotel, a free-state stronghold in the mid-1800s.

• 6News video: Eldridge Hotel under new management (10-06-05)

The new ownership group entered the market looking to draw visitors near and far, from Lawrence-area residents to heritage travelers looking to follow the roots of the Civil War. They also hoped to book events and ring up sales through the hotel’s Jayhawker bar and Ten restaurant.

Bobby Douglass, a hotel co-owner, Chicago businessman and former Kansas University and NFL quarterback, oversaw the bar and restaurant operations until June, when the ownership group decided to pursue hiring a full-time manager for the operations.

At the time, the owners said that such responsibilities would fall to English until a new, full-time manager for the bar and restaurant could be hired.

Now, Chaney said, there is no longer a search. The owners have given responsibilities for the bar and restaurant to the hotel’s chef, Randy Dixon.

Many of English’s former duties have been left to Nancy Longhurst, who had served as the Eldridge’s manager in the late 1980s. Until August she worked as executive director for the Lawrence Chamber of Commerce’s Leadership Lawrence program, which put her in contact with many of the community’s movers and shakers.

Now, as an on-site representative for the ownership group, Longhurst is working on marketing efforts and anything else the owners deem fit.

“I’m having a wonderful time working with the employees here,” Nancy Longhurst said. “It’s a special place. I love to be with people, and I get to be around people a lot.”

The owners had brought English to Lawrence earlier this year to oversee hotel operations, even before the four-month renovation project was complete. And English, whose own wife is a KU graduate, was happy to come.

He had spent six years in upstate New York, where he managed the Hotel Utica – a 103-year old, 112-room property that he steered through a $13 million renovation. He previously managed Hotel Madison, a property in Norfolk, Va., during a $14 million makeover, and the Chamberlain Hotel, a 310-room property in Hampton, Va., as it received an $8 million overhaul.

Joel Fritzel, another member of the Eldridge ownership group, declined to discuss the hotel’s “new direction,” other than to say it would be a plus for the community.

“We’re all working together to make this what the hotel needs to be, and we want to have a wonderful place for everybody,” Fritzel said.