photo by: Chad Lawhorn/Journal-World

Flames erupt through the roof of Cielito Lindo, 815 New Hampshire St., on Thursday, Dec. 14, 2023, in downtown Lawrence.

Workouts at Lawrence’s Red Dog Days have been known to hurt a little, but the one on the morning of December 14 was particularly rude for local businessman Jeff Hatfield.

Hatfield arrived bright and early for the 6 a.m. community workout, and was greeted oddly by his friend, retired Lawrence fire chief Shaun Coffey.

Coffey said he was surprised to see Hatfield — given that one of his buildings was on fire. Hatfield, a local real estate appraiser who has ownership interests in multiple Lawrence properties, asked which one.

The Cielito Lindo Mexican restaurant building in downtown, he was told.

Was it a small one, Hatfield asked.

A shake of the head. “That’s why I said I was surprised to see you,” Hatfield recalls Coffey saying.

The morning’s workout suddenly had an addendum: A dash to downtown.

photo by: Chad Lawhorn/Journal-World

Crews work the scene of a large fire Thursday, Dec. 14, 2023, in the 800 block of New Hampshire Street.

By the time Hatfield arrived, the bulk of the firefighting was completed, but remnants of it still flowed down the street. The building at 815 New Hampshire St. had been surrounded by multiple aerial ladder trucks that literally dumped thousands of gallons of water per minute on the building that was fully engulfed in flames.

“I had no idea what we were going to do, to be honest,” Hatfield recently told me when I asked him his thoughts upon arrival.

I was at the fire scene in the early morning hours — while flames were still shooting through the roof — taking photos for the Journal-World. I was pretty sure I knew what wasn’t going to happen: The building would never be used again.

Indeed, a couple of weeks after the fire, the city’s Historic Resources Commission took the unusual step of approving of the demolition of the building, although a demolition permit for the structure hadn’t yet been sought by Hatfield and his partners in the ownership group.

To the surprise of many, it never was. The group figured out how to save the fire-ravage building. Well, maybe the credit should be a little more specific.

“It was all in the hands of the engineers,” Hatfield said. “They made the initial and final assessments and they came back with a report that the structural integrity was intact.”

With that ruling in hand, the partners knew they wanted to try to save the building. There was never a desire to try to replace the building with something bigger or taller. For more than 30 years, the building had served as a darn fine restaurant site, most recently as Cielito Lindo and for decades before as Dos Hombres.

“Several generations of students associate that spot with good Mexican food,” Hatfield, a Lawrence native, noted.

The site’s patio, which I think is the largest in downtown, also has been known to serve margaritas the size of a luxury goldfish bowl, which have produced a generation of memories that are hazy at best and deeply suppressed at worst.

So, construction work began to save the building, and it largely is complete, Hatfield said. The ownership group recently began advertising the building for lease. The assumption is a restaurant will end up occupying the space, but no deal has been reached yet.

The former Cielito Lindo building at 815 New Hampshire Street is pictured on Nov. 15, 2024.

At 5,200 square feet, with seating on two floors, the building is one of the larger restaurant sites in downtown, especially given that the approximately 2,100-square-foot patio remains.

What doesn’t remain is the building’s distinctive skylights that faced New Hampshire Street. It was found over the years that they largely just made the building hotter during the summer, Hatfield said. A big goal of the remodel was to greatly improve the energy efficiency of the building, he said, so the skylights were jettisoned. The group, though, did add large new windows on the backside of the building, which had existed years ago.

The building does have an interesting — and fiery — history. Years ago, the site was home to a Dr. Pepper bottling plant, and the building stretched much closer to New Hampshire Street. But that building also caught fire. The current structure replaced it, maybe in the mid-1970s, but no later than 1980, said Hatfield, who interviewed members of the Green family — of Lawrence’s B.A. Green Construction — that constructed the building.

Give the Green family a little credit for saving the building from this most recent fire too. Its original construction of the building was a big factor in the structural integrity of the building surviving, Hatfield said.

“If the plans said to use four nails, they didn’t use three. They used five,” he said.

The building, of course, did have to undergo major construction to be usable again. That included an entirely new roof system, new mechanical systems and many changes to bring the building up to current code — including a fire sprinkler system.

photo by: Chris Conde/Journal-World

Firefighters continued to spray water on the Cielito Lindo building, 815 New Hampshire St., on Thursday, Dec. 14, 2023, hours after a devastating fire erupted.

But those issues have been addressed, and Hatfield specifically said the city of Lawrence staff worked hard to help the project go smoothly. Now, interior work remains to be done on the building, but that will wait until a tenant is found for the building.

Who that will be is unknown. The building has a major advantage over most spaces in downtown in that it qualifies for a grandfathered liquor license. New liquor licenses in downtown must be attached to a business that makes the bulk of its revenues from food sales rather than liquor sales. Since this location had a liquor license prior to that change in the city’s liquor license law, the location can continue to operate with a liquor license that doesn’t have the food requirement. Hatfield, though, said the group isn’t planning to attract a traditional nightclub to the site. Rather, the liquor license will give flexibility to a restaurant.

“We are looking for someone who fits in with the fabric of downtown,” Hatfield said.

Hatfield said a Mexican restaurant would suit him fine, given the history of the site. He said the group would definitely be open to Cielito Lindo returning to the site, but he stopped short of saying such a deal was in the works or whether it was even likely. An owner of Cielito Lindo recently opened Los Guapos Latin Food on Sixth Street.

Hatfield, though, said remorse for Cielito Lindo and its owners and employees continues to be the biggest emotion that he has from the fire.

“A building can be replaced,” Hatfield said. “I felt awful for our tenant and awful for their employees. They had worked so hard to build that business, and within five hours, they no longer had a place of employment.”

photo by: Chad Lawhorn/Journal-World

Crews work the scene of a large fire Thursday, Dec. 14, 2023, in the 800 block of New Hampshire Street.

photo by: Chad Lawhorn/Journal-World

Crews work the scene of a large fire Thursday, Dec. 14, 2023, in the 800 block of New Hampshire Street.