By Miranda Willson

Thursday, Dec. 26, 2019 | 2 a.m.

The El Rancho Hotel and Casino was the place to be in Wells, a small Elko County town six hours north of Las Vegas. Originally a hotel-casino and later a community center and banquet hall, the El Rancho served the town of 1,200 since it was built in 1949.

Longtime Wells resident Paul Bottari recalls how the prominent downtown building hosted quinceaneras, parties and live music. He remembers the restaurant always serving food and the bar always open.

“It was certainly a gathering place,” Bottari said.

Then, disaster struck. A 6-magnitude earthquake hit Wells in February 2008, damaging hundreds of structures in town. The former owners of the El Rancho, Gene and Peg Kaplan, were forced to move out of the building, Bottari said.

The El Rancho sat unused for years until the Kaplans gifted the property to the city of Wells in 2015, with the hope that it could be restored, city manager Jolene Supp said.

Around the same time, the Las Vegas-based Nevada Preservation Foundation caught wind of the property, executive director Heidi Swank said. A board member for the organization was on a road trip in northeastern Nevada when he spotted the midcentury modern building and approached the city about it.

“He said, ‘We want to help you out,’” Swank said.

At first, Swank was skeptical about taking on the project, the first one undertaken by the organization outside of Southern Nevada, due to its great distance from Las Vegas. But after meeting with Supp, Swank realized that her organization could help the city nominate the building for placement on the National Register of Historic Places and advise Supp on sourcing of materials for the restoration process.

Swank was also inspired by Supp’s dedication to the community and the El Rancho’s future, calling the city manager “an amazing force of nature.”

Now, the city has secured funding from the federal Community Development Block Grant program and the Nevada Commission for Cultural Centers and Historic Preservation to help restore the property. Restoration is estimated to cost about $500,000 to the city as well, but Supp said the payoff will be worth it: The city plans to reopen the building as a community center, restaurant and small-business incubator.

“We don’t have anything like that downtown,” she said.

The idea behind the small-business incubator is to provide a space for start-ups to test out their ideas, collaborate and obtain funding for needed resources, Supp said.

“(Then) they could go out on their own, just as an incubating concept suggests, and grow up and be a real business,” she explained. “It creates jobs.”

City crews and volunteers are currently conducting restoration work on the first floor of the two-story building, Supp said. Bricks on the exterior of the property that fell during the earthquake have been reclaimed, cleaned, stacked and repainted, said Mariana Ruiz, an architectural historian with the preservation foundation. The documents for nomination to the federal register are also almost complete, Swank said.

Despite the earthquake damage, the El Rancho is remarkably intact and true to its original form, making it a strong contender for placement on the national register, Ruiz said. The original neon sign displaying the name of the hotel also remains.

“For the most part, the façade has not changed significantly, and the northwest and south elevations are still the same,” Ruiz said.

The first floor is expected to be completed by next summer, while the second floor could take some time, Supp said. Once it’s finished, the building will be weather-proof and seismically compliant in the event of a future earthquake, she added.

Longtime resident Elaine Swanson has high hopes for the future of the building. She recalls going to firemen’s balls and Christmas parties there as a young woman in the 1960s. More recently, her daughter’s wedding reception was held in the building in 2005.

She says the restoration and reopening of the building could help revitalize downtown Wells, which hasn’t fully recovered from the earthquake.

“So many buildings closed. All of Front Street had to come down,” Swanson said, referring to the historic street parallel to the railroad tracks.

Bob Selby, a relative newcomer in Wells who moved to town 10 years ago, said the return of a community center to downtown is much-needed. He has been helping with the cleanup of the building as a volunteer through the local historical society, the Society for Preservation of Western Heritage.

“We’re just trying to get it going,” Selby said.

Built by local businessman Leo Quilici, the El Rancho was designed to be more modern-looking than some of the other buildings in town, Swank said. Through the El Rancho and other entertainment venues he owned, Quilici hoped that Wells could become “the next Las Vegas,” Swank said.

Although that vision of Quilici was never realized, the building he built on Lake Avenue still serves as a reminder of the community’s history. Once restored, it will help bring residents together, Swank said.

“It’s going to be that center of town that everyone will remember because so much of the town is gone,” Swank said. “It is the one piece that will really tie them back to their past and their history, and it’s something that really grounds the community.”