Rusty Varnado, Ellsworth City administrator, had interesting news on the old Ellsworth Memorial Hospital Monday, during the weekly meeting of the Ellsworth County commissioners.

Varnado said Gary Woodward is the new owner of vacant old hospital, which was built in 1921. Woodward, again according to Varnado, plans to offer public ghost tours of the building, as well as overnight stays in the building.

Varnado said he has been trying to contact the owner. He noted a meeting was scheduled with the owner, but that fell through.

“I’m not optimistic,” Varnado told the commissioners. “While we’re willing to work with him, we’re going to proceed with the plan for the demolition.”

Varnado said as of last week, the deed on the old hospital property is still in the name of the old owner.

Varnado said the next step in that process is to get engineering and asbestos removal reports completed and reviewed, then develop a request for proposal, which will contain a timeline for the project to be completed.

In researching this story, the Independent-Reporter went to the Facebook page of the Central Kansas Paranormal Society and found a link to a petition on change.org titled “Save the Old Ellsworth Hospital.”

According to the link, Jonathan Dougherty started the petition which has so far gathered 79 signatures.

The petition reads as follows: “As if early 2022, my friend Gary Woodward bought the Old Ellsworth Memorial Hospital. We had plans of restoring the building and making it one of the top most haunted Hospitals in the country.

We have multiple people from TV wanting to come to help us save the building and help with putting the location on the map but also the town of Ellsworth Kansas on the map.

We are being threatened but the city officials who want to demo the location for personal gain even though it’s private property. We do have lawyers ready to

We do have lawyers ready to fight but it’s going to be a long process.

We need the support and signatures to save this spot for future films and documentaries.”

In other business:

• Varnado briefly updated the commissioners on the work on the retention ponds near Krisek Park.

He said if the conditions would have been as expected in the original plan, everything would have been fine. However, the contractor unexpectedly hit rock. Now, Kirkham Michael & Associates have to do a redesign of the project. Varnado said he was scheduled to attend a Zoom meeting later in the morning to consider the next steps to be taken.

“That project was originally supposed to take 30 days,” Varnado said. “We’re well beyond that now.”

Due to President’s Day, the next meeting of the Ellsworth County commissioners is at 9 a.m. Tuesday, Feb. 22, at the county courthouse.