Terril bank building. (Terril FB photo)
A developer plans to restore a historic building in downtown Terril.
The former bank was in danger of being demolished. The Terril City Council has unanimously approved transferring ownership of the building to Tyler Kilgore of Estherville.
“I liked the look of the building,” Kilgore says. “I didn’t want to see it torn down, so I thought I’d put a proposal in to try to turn it into something and try to generate some business in the Terril area,” he says.
Kilgore would consider retrofitting the building for a specific tenant, but his initial plan is to turn the old bank into an events center.
“Something people could rent out for birthday parties, wedding events, dances, anything like that. That was kind of my initial thought. I’m kind of open to stuff, I guess. I’m not really stuck on that,” Kilgore says. “…If someone were to come in and…get ahold of me and say: ‘Hey, I want to open up a restaurant in that area,’ I would be open to turning it into that also.”
Kilgore estimates it will take about $265,000 to complete the restoration he has in mind. “The exterior and the foundation looks pretty good. The whole inside needs to be redone…Plumbing, electrical, HVAC, pour concrete inside, redo the roof, put either garage doors in the windows or just all new windows but in the original openings because they’re pretty big because they’re like 10 feet tall and like 8 feet wide, I think,” Kilgore says. “Just kind of restore it not necessarily to its original state, but something similar.”
Kilgore was the only person to submit a bid to save the building. Terril was incorporated in the 1899. It had 334 residents during the 2020 Census.
(By Ed Funston, KILR, Estherville)