Michigan has more than 400 B & B's, so it can take some work to create a retreat people want to visit. Kara Keller has done the work to create a unique getaway close to downtown Kalamazoo. Jane Parikh has the story of Kara's Kottages.
The view from West Main Street is of a brightly painted yellow house.
What the casual observer will likely not see is how far back it goes to accommodate three separate units which are part of
Kara’s Kottages, the latest addition to Bed & Breakfast offerings concentrated mostly in the city’s downtown area.
Kara Keller, owner of the B & B that bears her name, bought the house for $85,000 in 1996 from a longtime mentor she met while earning an associate’s degree in General Studies from Kalamazoo Valley Community College. She continued to rent out rooms in the house to students attending area colleges and universities and a "mixed bag" of other tenants.
"When I bought it I realized the depth of the work that would be involved," she says. "This house was in awful, awful, awful shape. It basically should have been condemned."
She dove into the restoration and renovation on a shoestring budget with the intention of eventually moving in as a tenant.
While working on the house, Keller, a native of Three Oaks, continued her job with the former First of America Bank and lived in a carriage house she was renting in Plainwell. This was around the time that she started "The Painted Lady," a commercial painting business she closed earlier this year. Her first tenant was a painting contractor and he taught her the ins and outs of painting for a living.
Until 2006 units in the house were rented as unfurnished. Then Keller decided to start renting them as high-end, furnished apartments with monthly rates increasing from $800 to $1,100.
"That was a great move because I got better quality people and more money," she says. "I still had students, but I also had professionals and young professionals."
Five years after offering more upscale accommodations, a friend of Keller’s who was working up the street at Henderson Castle encouraged her to ditch the tenants and open a B & B. This was in October, 2011, and Keller had paid off the mortgage on the house.
"They knew I had one of my units open and they asked me if I could take in their overflow guests. I knew I had another unit opening up and I decided I was going to go for it," she says. "This is when I knew a B & B was a viable thing."
She spent the winter of 2011 making preparations to open her B & B without knowing much about the industry.
"I was just self-taught and I thought I would dive in headfirst," Keller says. "When you start a business you don’t know what you don’t know yet. Half the battle with this business is just being found."
A majority of the B & B’s in the city are located in the Stuart Avenue Neighborhood, in close proximity to Kara’s Kottage’s.
Dana Underwood, with the Stuart Avenue Bed & Breakfast, says she thinks B & B’s have been established in this area of town for a variety of reasons.
"The Stuart neighborhood has some beautiful old homes that are priced lower than homes on West Main Hill," she says. "We’ve also had B & B’s here since the 1980’s and the neighborhood is kind of used to having them."
Keller researched other B & B’s in town to see what they were doing to be successful, thriving enterprises. She says a great deal of the income she earned from the Painted Lady went into basic maintenance. The initial startup cost to renovate the three units into luxury living quarters before the first guest arrived on Keller’s doorstep on December 31, 2011 was about $40,000.
There are two two-bedroom units and one unit with an open studio floor plan. Each unit has a fully stocked kitchen and a living room area with a gas fireplace and a media center.
The B & B is about 3,000-square-feet. Keller describes the look of each unit as cottage classic and eclectic with earth tones such as browns, beiges and whites offset with punches of color. One unit has very light peach colors with gray curtains.
Since opening Keller has doubled her business every year. During that first year she was making three times as much as she did as a landlord. The majority of her guests book a week or two in advance mostly for an overnight or weekend stay. But, she also has people who stay for a week or more because of the kitchen facilities.
"I don’t cook and I don’t have a common kitchen or living room. I had to be very, very creative about the breakfast part," Keller says. "I was going to provide every breakfast item I could conceive of for our guests to make their own breakfast. It’s a Bed and Breakfast--and you make both."
One recent guest here on business from japan needed 89 nights and Keller was able to accommodate 20 of those. The woman ended up spending the remainder of her stay on the second floor of Keller’s Clarendon Street home, which was renovated to accommodate guests who require an extended living situation.
"Usually by the time I know they are coming here for three months I have bookings galore interrupting their stay," Keller says. "I thought I would get really predictable people here like the parents of Kalamazoo College students or people relocating for jobs with the Kellogg Co. They make up less than 5 percent of my guests.
"About 95 percent are tourists here to visit Kalamazoo because of its thriving downtown or people who see the rooms on our website and want to stay here not knowing anything about this town."
Unlike B & B’s in Europe where the owners meet their guests face-to-face, Keller says she rarely sees her clientele. Reservations are typically made via the Kara’s Kottages website and guests receive complete instructions about accessing their room with a keyless entry system.
The most time-consuming part of running the B & B is purchasing the food and cleaning the rooms. A housekeeper comes in everyday and Keller is there about three times a week.
"This is the easiest job I’ve ever had and the most money I’ve ever made," she says.