SPRING HILL, Kan. — A Spring Hill wedding venue is closed, forcing couples to find new spaces to get married in a pinch.
The building also housed Bull Creek Distillery. Several people have been impacted by the closure.
The gates are closed outside Bull Creek Distillery and The Bowery wedding venue. There’s also a foreclosure sign hanging on the fence — sending some brides and grooms into a panic.
“I was just like, is this real life?” Bride Alexis Harris said.
Harris was looking forward to her wedding day in April at the Bowery.
“I was going to have my wedding right there,” Harris said.
Couples with now with no altar as the property is closed.
Security also turned away people hoping to grab a bite at Bull Creek Distillery.
“We’re here for lunch,” A man said.
Documents on the Johnson Co. website show, in June of this year, Country Club Bank on paid taxes that the Bowery owed for years 2016 through 2022.
Currently, the county website shows that the Bowery owes more than $63,000 in real estate taxes for 2023.
The documents show that the bank now owns the property.
“Court documents don’t lie,” Harris said.
Owner Mike Denny sent an email to clients that said, the landlord of The Bowery events property has lost all access to the venue.
He offered an alternative location that’s just under 25 minutes away in Cleveland, Mo.
“It’s a lot less venue for the money,” Groom Jesse Sloan said.
“Some of these packages included wedding coordination, and cash bar and stuff like that and add on services. and you go to a different venue,” Harris said, “and it’s just becoming more expensive.”
Harris asked Denny for her $1,200 deposit back. She said he told her “I don’t have the money to give you.”
“Disgusted,” Harris said. “I have a baby on the way.”
Sloan and his fiancé put down a $2,500 deposit for their wedding reception. It was supposed to be in April.
“That’s two months mortgage on our house,” Sloan said.
They walked though The Bowery two years ago — planning the big day, he said.
Without getting that chunk of change back, he said they may be headed to the courthouse.
“To be completely honest with you it almost means us giving up on having a ceremony or anything at all,” Sloan said. “I spent yesterday talking to my finance getting a marriage license, having somebody sign it, doing it that way, because we dip it more of the money that we had, then that means we don’t get a honeymoon we don’t do anything else and that kind of defeats the purpose.”
Sloan said he wants to make sure this doesn’t happen to another couple.
“It’s more frustrating than anything because I know friends that were looking to use that property and had appointments to go walk and see the venue and everything else,” Sloan said.
“It was just kind of that gut wrenching feeling of I knew it was an LLC and when you all the foreclosures and stuff.”
FOX4 emailed “Owner Bowery Events” to find answers. We received this response:
“We are handling a lot of incoming and outgoing messages at the moment trying to relocate our brides. We are sending this to the owner of Bowery Events Mike Denny and he will be reaching out to you shortly. Thank you so much.”
FOX4 also called and left Denny multiple messages but did not hear back.
