The Rochester Hotel clan, Kirk Komick, his mother, Diane Wildfang, and her husband, Fred Wildfang, sit in the hotel’s secret garden recently. The family moved to Durango in 1992 and quickly set about revitalizing East Second Avenue./Photo by Jennaye Derge

A family affair

Reflecting on nearly 25 years of East Second renaissance

by Ted Holteen

When Fred Wildfang met his most recent dream girl in 1988, he was ecstatic at the idea of settling down in L.A. with his newfound love.

 So how is that Fred & Diane Wildfang, who was Diane Komick at the time, now own the Rochester and Leland House Bed & Breakfast, two of the most iconic hotels here in Durango, more than a mile above and a thousand miles east of the beaches of Southern California?

“It was a dream, I found a beach bunny at my age, the kids are grown up – so after I move in, the first thing she wants to do is move to the mountains. I told her, ‘Where you go, honey, I’ll follow.’ And I have.”

After Fred, a Minnesota native, and Diane explored the Rocky Mountains from Banff to Santa Fe, with a quick stop in Vegas for a 1991 wedding, they settled in Durango with Diane’s son Kirk in 1992.  The purchase of several run-down buildings on East Second Avenue would change their lives and that of their new town forever.

“I came here to retire,” Diane said recently during an afternoon cocktail hour on the front porch of the Wildfang’s Third Avenue home.  Fred, 71, can usually be found there most summer days until the winters drive him south to Arizona. “And so every time I tell Kirk that I’m retiring and don’t want him to give me any more jobs, he just laughs and tells me all my retirement letters are in a file in his cabinet and he can’t fit any more in there.”

Kirk was no blonde-headed stepchild when his mom married Fred, and both men helped to run the Komick family business in Arizona, where they lived before moving to Colorado. At the time, aspiring author Fred was already retired after 20 years doing Don Draper before there was a Don Draper at the legendary ad house, Saatchi & Saatchi in Los Angeles. But try as he might to live the leisurely life of a mountain town  writer, and he has – Fred has published 12 books as well as a stage play and a collection of poetry – the hotel business has dominated the family’s time and efforts for the past 23 years.

Despite the hard work, it’s hardly been a living hell. It was no small task to rehabilitate the hotels as well as the two properties that now house Eno and the Cyprus Café and were later sold to the restaurant’s proprietress, Alison Dance. But in doing so, the Wildfangs led a renaissance on Second Avenue that pushed the car dealerships to Bodo Pak and created a complementary retail district to Main Avenue. And with Kirk shouldering much of the load, along with his sister Kara and staff members who are nearing two decades with the hotels, the Leland House and Rochester have become modern day icons of this once Old West town. Some guests have stayed as many as 400 nights in the two hotels.

“Kirk’s the best P.R. guy in town, and that’s not just for us, but for Durango,” Fred said.

The impact that the infusion of a second downtown business district has had on the city can hardly be measured accurately, but the Wildfangs’ philanthropy is more tangible. “We’ve always thought you have to get involved,” Diane said. “When I first built the hotel I said ‘everyone has to join something.’ I think Fred ended up on six boards and Kirk has joined not just something but everything.”

It’s only the slightest of exaggerations, as Kirk, who turns 50 this week, is one of the most visible figures at just about every imaginable happening in town. The family also appears high on the donor lists of most every significant arts and charitable organization.

Their most recent contribution is more direct, as the Rochester is hosting a weekly concert series this summer in the outdoor Secret Garden, with a different nonprofit getting the proceeds each week. The concerts happen every Wednesday through Sept. 30. Next up is Hello Dollface on Wednesday, with the band’s own iAM Music Institute as the beneficiary.

The concerts typically have full-house attendance, and Kirk said it brings a diversity of crowds each week as each organization rallies its own support. Getting picked isn’t easy, however. He said he was glad the family put the choice into the hands of a selection committee organized by the Community Foundation, because in this first year alone there were 57 applications for the 12 available concert slots.

While Fred how old is he? is a frequent albeit brief visitor to the weekly concerts, expect to see more of him in the coming months as Purgatory readies for its 50th anniversary season. Already among the most respected local historians, Fred was commissioned to write the coffee table book celebrating the resort’s golden anniversary. It includes more than 200 photographs, and he expects it to be released in December as the season opens. He’s also finishing a biography of Hunter S. Thompson but has yet to settle on a publisher for that project.

As for Kirk, he’s got a 50th birthday party of his own to worry about this week, but don’t expect that number to slow him down. In fact, with his mom’s insistence to live up to her own words, if anything we’ll probably see even more of Kirk in the near future.

“Now I think maybe I am really retiring,” she said, “but I’ll always be involved with the hotel – it’s my pride and joy. It wasn’t a turnaround-and-make-money thing, it was a lot of work. But that’s why I moved here, I wanted to do historic preservation.”

Her husband, still willing to follow her anywhere, couldn’t agree more.

“She was the one with the vision. She saw the Rochester when everybody else said ‘Ugh!’ Fred said. “But look at it now, it’s beautiful.”

Ted Holteen writes about local people whether they like it or not. Get noticed at egholteen@yahoo.com.