See photos of Yellow Spring's spanking new Mills Park Hotel and restaurant

Yellow Springs fans will soon have a new place to stay, eat and shop. 

Mills Park Hotel will welcome its first guests. 

Designed to resemble Mills house -- the mansion Yellow Spring founder William Mills built in the around 1843 -- the boutique hotel and its restaurant, Ellie’s Restaurant and Bakery, opens for business Monday, April 25. Its gift shop will open later. 
The hotel owned by Jim and Libby Hammond with their daughter Katie is on 1.6 acres of land at 321 Xenia Ave. in ecletic downtown Yellow Springs. 
Reservations are being taken. 

Credit: Amelia Robinson

Credit: Amelia Robinson

The restaurant named for Katie Hammond’s beloved corgi Ellie will be open only for breakfast (served from 7 a.m.-11 a.m.) and lunch (served 11 a.m. to 3 p.m) until July. It is decorated with colorful cartoonish drawings of Ellie and other dogs by local artist Kathy Moulton, and features tables made from from ash trees that were once on the property. 
With Grant Petersen as executive chef, Ellie’s menu offers a variety of dishes, including Jumbo Lump Crab Cakes with Potato Hash, Pumpkin Dumpling Duck Confit Asiago Sage, Chicken & Waffles, Shaved Catfish & Greens, and the Corgi Club, made with country ham, roast turkey, bacon, leaf lettuce, extra sharp cheddar and horseradish mayo.  
Jim Hammond said the hotel lounge will soon open in the evening. 
Four years in the making, the hotel includes a conference room, business center, gym, a 150-seat banquet hall and a gift shop called Little Miami Mercantile. 
The Hammonds took care to hire local companies for their project. The family lives just outside of the village, and their roots in the area go back four generations. 
The Hammonds also own Grinnell Mill Bed & Breakfast in the village.
You can spot several local touches around the hotel.
Art from Yellow Springs High School student Lake Miller hangs in the hotel’s 28 rooms, including four with access to a balcony overlooking downtown Yellow Springs. That balcony will surely be a spot to be for the Yellow Springs Street Fair and any Saturday.  

Kinney Custom Designs created the rocking chairs that will adorn the southern-style hotel's grand front porch. Gregor Construction did some of the finishing work on the property. 

We took a tour of the hotel. Check out the gallery above. 

The design for the Mills Park Hotel is based on the former Mills House, pictured here. (Screen grab) 

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