FARMVILLE – Helen Keller stayed there and now the Hotel Weyanoke's owner is hoping someone brings their own vision to the historic building when it goes up for auction on December 19 at 1 p.m.

Helen Keller, with the help of Annie Sullivan, learned to see through blindness. Seeing a bright future for the Weyanoke is far less daunting.

Kenneth Brumfield believes the sky is the limit for the 202 High Street property, located one block up from Main Street and across from Longwood University.

Brumfield, who purchased the building in 2000, has been renting to three LU sororities, which he said has worked out extremely well.

A new owner could continue renting to students or, he said, when asked about other possibilities, the Weyanoke might be remodeled into “a boutique hotel…or a very large-scale bed and breakfast kind of thing, which I guess is sort of like a boutique hotel…I think that could just do very, very well.

“I think it would be very popular, with the location, obviously, right across from Longwood, a block from Main Street. It doesn't get much better,” he told The Herald during a Friday afternoon interview.

The Hotel Weyanoke opened in 1925, with Keller's visit, accompanied by her teacher, Sullivan, coming two years later to attend a Lions Club state conference.

The future of the building, Brumfield said, “just depends on how much money the investor wants to put in it, and kind of what their scope, their own vision is.”

Interest in the property, he believes, will be keen.

“I definitely believe there is the possibility of out of state (interest). The East Coast, obviously, sounds a little grandiose,” he said, but the firm handling the auction has plenty of experience.

The nation-wide auction firm Tranzon Fox, according to a press release, “enjoys the marketing of known landmark buildings-the Mercer Rug Cleaning location, 'This End Up' furniture company and 'Carpool' headquarters building, Berry Hill Plantation and Windemere are a few successful auctions that Tranzon has handled.”

After only a few days of marketing on the internet, with no media coverage, there had been 37 downloads of information about the Hotel Weyanoke auction.

“Granted,” Brumfield acknowledges, some of the internet hits could be simply out of curiosity. But, he adds, “you're going to look for a reason.”

And he has been told that many downloads was “really a pretty exceptional response, that quickly.”

Brumfield is well aware of the Weyanoke Hotel's history and said “the building's been great.”

The press release praises the “sturdy construction of exterior masonry and steel beams (that) will allow for complete creative interior renovations without the limitations of interior columns and support walls. The opportunities are endless-condos, apartments, senior living, student housing or even offices, with opportunity for restaurant/retail on the main and lower basement levels.”

Located in Farmville's enterprise zone, renovations to the building would be eligible for historic and enterprise tax credits on the federal, state and local levels.

The Hotel Weyanoke was built for about $140,000, that capital outlay raised completely by local citizens in 1924, according to Today And Yesterday In The Heart Of Virginia, published by The Herald.

The Hotel Weyanoke was so successful so quickly that the entire bonded indebtedness was cleared by 1933, with stockholders expecting dividends.

The future was just beginning.

Renting to the sororities has proved a successful use of the property, according to Brumfield, each of the three sororities occupying one of the hotel building's floors, with 10 bedrooms, 10 bathrooms, a living room and a kitchen on each of those three floors.

“The sororities, it's just been great because parents pay the rent, it's a no-brainer,” he said, adding that “the students basically do the marketing themselves (among their sorority sisters) for the next year. You're more or less guaranteed 100 percent (occupancy),” he said.

With the sorority members recruiting sorority sisters to fill in the rooming space opened up by graduates, Brumfield said, “it takes me out of the equation for the marketing. I just gotta fix things and be attentive to the tenant but you don't have to kill yourself marketing it.”

A smooth operation.

What Brumfield will not miss when the Hotel Weyanoke is sold is managing a restaurant.

“I'm not a restaurant person. I don't know how else to put it,” he said, critiquing his own restaurant management skills. “Just my management of it. I'm not a restaurant person. I can't do it.”

The auction, therefore, is the final big menu item on Brumfield's Hotel Weyanoke ownership and was chosen, according to the press release, because “the property was under contract and the buyers failed to perform so a new buyer will be found via the auction process.”

Ironically for a hotel celebrated for, among other things, the visit by Keller and Sullivan, an ad for the hotel in the back of the 1935-published Today And Yesterday In The Heart Of Virginia contains, in bold letters, the word Vision.

And this quote: “Where there is no vision the people perish-but where there is vision the people prosper.

“Farmville was (built) by men of broad vision who translated far-sighted views into action and founded a structure which is growing into a thriving center of education, commerce and industry.

“The Hotel Weyanoke stands as an enduring monument to the dreams of a better and finer city-a lasting tribute to the broad vision of those who conceived it and made possible its realization…”

Brumfield is hoping for bids in two weeks from buyers with a vision for The Hotel Weyanoke's future in the heart of Virginia, adding a tomorrow to the history of yesterday and today.