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January 19, 2010

Anonymous The Corsicana Daily Sun Tue Jan 19, 2010, 09:53 PM CST

By Janet Jacobs

Daily Sun

The Corsicana Planning and Zoning Commission will vote Thursday on approving a boarding house that isn’t a boarding house — it’s a speciality bed and breakfast without the breakfast.

Suzie Ellis is the applicant for the special use permit that would allow the hotel at the 504 W. Second, formerly known as the Eden House. Ellis owns the shop Scrappin’ Good Time, a scrapbook supply store in Corsicana.

“A bed and breakfast is zoned ‘boarding house’,” Ellis explained. “There is no B and B zoning.”

Ellis also doesn’t intend to cook, which also eliminates inspections by the health department.

“It’s a scrapbooking retreat,” she explained. “The ladies bring all their own stuff, their paper, their trimmers, their photos. They have a table and chair adn they scrap as long as they want and when they get tired they go upstairs and to bed.”

For food, Ellis intends to refer them to local eateries and grocery stores.

Scrapbooking retreats have become a major trend in the hobby world, and it’s one that Ellis wants to bring to Corsicana. She already hosts retreats in Milford in Ellis County. An upcoming retreat in Milford will have women from Tyler, Waco, Waxahachie, Denver, Colo., and Beaumont — everywhere except Corsicana.

Convinced she can make it a prosperous business locally, she has been looking for almost a year for a site. Her original concept called for finding a downtown location, and moving her entire operation to the downtown area. Her store is currently in the Southland Center on 15th Street. But the Eden House would also work, even though her store will have to stay where it is. The Eden House is zoned multi-family, but not retail.

Her concern is that because the retreat is labeled a boarding house that neighbors won’t want it. Scrapbooking retreats are not rambunctious events, she pointed out.

“It’s more of a fellowship,” Ellis said. “I don’t allow smoking, and drinking has to be kept to a minimum because you don’t know what your pages are going to look like. They might have a glass of wine with dinner, but we’re not a rowdy, hell-raising bunch of women. We’re mothers, grandmothers, aunts and sisters. It’s a very sedate group of ladies.”

The reason to have the retreats is to allow the women flexibility and quiet in which to get their scrapbooking projects done.

“There are people who will stay up until 3 or 4 a.m. scrapping,” she said. “If you want to scrap in your pajamas, you scrap in your pajamas. You don’t have to put on your make-up.”

Regardless, the city has said ‘no’ to a scrapbook retreat before. In March 2009, the planning and zoning commission rejected a proposal from a Waxahachie couple that wanted to start a scrapbooking retreat in a historic home on Fourth Avenue in what’s called the Carriage District.

Under the city’s ordinances, that Fourth Avenue house needed to be rezoned as multifamily, and neighbors objected, saying it could turn into an apartment house.

John and Corey Acton said they wanted to start their retreat in Corsicana because it is away from the hustle and bustle of the big city, but still had the conveniences of nail salons and grocery stores. When the rezoning was rejected, the couple changed their plans.

Ellis is hoping that because the Eden House isn’t in the Carriage District that it will find acceptance.

“This is going to be a good thing,” she said. “I can’t imagine why anybody wouldn’t want it in their neighborhood.”

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Janet Jacobs may be reached via e-mail at jacobs@corsicanadailysun.com. Want to “Soundoff” on this story? E-mail: soundoff@corsicanadailysun.com.

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