Buckner-Ragsdale building begins new life as an event center

After a year of construction, The Buckner-Ragsdale Event Center at 132 Main St. in downtown Cape Girardeau has opened.

A preview event Thursday, April 25, served both to prepare staff for future events and to showcase the location to prospective entertainers, caterers and wedding industry professionals.

“The hope is, we want anyone who is involved in event party planning to have a chance to come see it and try to figure out how they can get involved and be a part of the events here,” said developer Jeff Maurer, president and chief executive officer of the Mayson Capital Partners private investment firm.

The event center can hold several hundred people simultaneously among its three floors. Its first official event will be a wedding in early May.

“We’ve had a lot of calls over the years for our Courtyard hotel for ... destination-type weddings where people want to stay downtown and be within a short walk of a lot of the stuff going on,” Maurer said.

In addition to weddings, class and family reunions, company parties and bereavement events can be scheduled for the event center.

“Our hope is really to try to do more to keep people who stay at The Riverview hotel (at Century Casino Cape Girardeau) or our Courtyard hotel for the weekend in the downtown area,” Maurer added.

The Ballroom, one of three event spaces at The Buckner-Ragsdale Event Center, was built in what was previously a department store showroom. The event center is the latest renovation of the historic downtown Cape Girardeau building.Christopher Borro ~ cborro@semissourian.com

A look inside

The Buckner-Ragsdale was a work of near-constant construction, and Maurer said he and the other developers are pleased with the final product.

The event center’s developers always wanted to build something in conjunction with Marriott’s Courtyard Cape Girardeau Downtown hotel, which Maurer’s firm also helped develop.

"At times, we thought about doing maybe a restaurant here, but as we researched more and more the need for events ... we just felt like there was a shortage of supply,” Maurer said.

To fulfill that need, they designed three event spaces and a boardroom of varying sizes and with different décor.

The ground floor is dominated by the Ballroom, with open floors and space for live entertainment to perform. Upstairs is the Loft, with brick walls and views of the Mississippi River. Downstairs, the Cellar features stone walls and framed photographs displaying the building’s history.

“We didn’t want the place to feel the same,” Maurer said. “You could come here to four events and it would feel totally different.”

The last room, located on the top floor, is the Lamkin Board Room. It features a sound system, video screens and a smaller environment for groups to meet.

Two elevators were constructed, one for public use and another for employees.

“We have four separate event spaces and we needed to get from the close-up kitchens to the prep areas to serve these floors privately,” Maurer said. “So we developed this back-of-the-house system that has a second elevator that comes from the kitchen and the basement that lets us get to the mezzanine level, where we have storage, and into the other levels.”

The event center has two kitchens. The larger one, the resident kitchen for in-house caterers Top of the Marq, features a built-in cooler and freezer. The other is a catering kitchen for additional caterers to work out of during events.

History in mind

The Buckner-Ragsdale building was one of Cape Girardeau’s most prominent localities in the early 20th century. It was used as a department store from 1907 to 1982.

Maurer and the other developers wanted to retain some of that historic flair, but it was at times difficult renovating such a venerable building.

“We used historic tax credits on the renovation, so we worked with the state historic society (The State Historical Society of Missouri) to make sure we were doing things in period that looked appropriate,” Maurer said. “But, at the same time, we have current standards for ADA access and the quality of the plumbing and so forth is all brand new.”

Maurer said no local incentives went into the construction cost. Everything was paid for via private development and historic tax credits.

All the contractors used, including general contractors Boulder Construction of Cape Girardeau, are local businesses.

General contractors invested more than 15,000 man-hours into the project. This number does not include subcontractor hours, which would add even more to the count.

“It’s an old building, built in the 1900s, so there’s always challenges and many unknowns,” said Scott Rhodes, co-owner of development partners The Rhodes Group.

Among the only parts of the original building left are the foyer and bannister on the second floor and some of the hardwood flooring.

“It just takes a long time to clean out an old building like this, reinforce it from a safety standpoint, work around all the peculiarities of an old building and then turn it into something we feel is state of the art for 2024,” Maurer said.

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