Utah Heritage Foundation

Groovacious, Groovefest. What is this, the 1960s?  Seems like it when you walk into Tim and Lisa Cretsinger’s record store – that’s right, record store – Groovacious in Cedar City, Utah. They moved their entire inventory of old vinyl and newer media from Keizer, Oregon in 2000. Tim vows they’ll never move again. 

His search for a stand-alone building with a cozy, lived-in feeling brought him to this former Lin’s Market a block off the main drag in the historic heart of Festival City USA. Only problem was, the owner was using the old Lin’s for storage with no intention of leasing. With his first load of inventory in town and a determination not to haul it back to Oregon, Tim sat down with his prospective landlord on a roll of carpet and convinced him that the old building would be more profitable as a record store than a storage unit.

The Hunter House restoration has been taken over by a SWATC team.  High school students enrolled in the Southwest Applied Technology College (SWATC) building construction class are repairing plaster, restoring a fireplace, and stripping and refinishing wood trim as part of the second phase of work on the historic home.  Other contractors began the restoration with repair of the foundation and re-roofing after the house was moved to the Frontier Homestead State Park Museum (formerly Iron Mission State Park) in 2005 to prevent its demolition.  Utah Heritage Foundation was instrumental in the advocacy process that led to arrangements for saving it.

As you may remember, Utah Heritage Foundation helped sound the alarm when the Hunter House, residence of founders of Cedar City, was threatened with demolition for a parking lot in 2007. UHF and the State Historic Preservation Office acted in partnership, though playing different roles during the process, to advise Cedar City as to their options and advocate for choices other than demolition.  Cedar City committed to move the house to Iron Mission State Park to save it with an agreement from the Hunter Family and State Parks to rehabilitate the house for interpretation.

Today, a restoration plan has been developed, the foundation has been finished, the mortar repointed, the chimneys rebuilt, the bay window reinstalled, the porch rebuilt (still needs some finishing), the carpet and linoleum removed, and the roof replaced.

This coming year, Todd Prince, Iron Mission State Park's Manager says they are hoping to install electrical, strip the floors, finish the porch, and begin refinishing the ceilings and walls.

Make a point to stop by Iron Mission State Park to see the Hunter House in progress and visit the park.