Pappas Restaurants Now Owns the Como Motel, but Preservationists Say It's Not Over Yet

Richardson's Como Motel on N. Central Expressway (U.S. Highway 75) officially has a new owner, but some local residents and business owners who don't want to see it demolished say there's still a chance to save the historic roadside landmark.

"It's not a done deal," says Reid Robinson, a musician and Beyond the Bar co-owner who's been working to protect the Como from bulldozers.

Robinson confirmed that Pappas Restaurants, the Houston-based company that owns chain restaurants Pappadeaux Seafood Kitchen and Pappasito's Cantina, purchased the motel, which went up for sale in June.

The colorful lodge has maintained its retro look for the last 67 years even though it may need a new coat of paint and some repairs. The motel not only has a historically significant look that gave Richardson an architectural attraction, it also has some historical connections that have prompted calls and even a petition with over 4,800 signatures for its preservation.

The Como Motel was the love nest hideaway for acquitted killer Candy Montgomery, who secretly met with a very married Allan Gore before she was charged with the brutal murder of Gore's wife, Betty, in 1980. Betty was hacked to death with a 3-foot-long ax in her Wylie home, and Montgomery was charged and later acquitted by a jury for the grisly crime, according to a 1984 story in Texas Monthly. Montgomery's story served as the basis for two recent series including the HBO miniseries Love & Death and the Hulu miniseries Candy.

The Como Motel was also regularly visited by a young Capt. Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger, the famed U.S. Airways pilot who performed a miraculous crash landing in the Hudson River on Jan. 15, 2006, after a bird strike had knocked out both of his plane's engines shortly after takeoff from New York's LaGuardia Airport. Sullenberger wrote in his 2016 memoir Highest Duty: My Search for What Really Matters that while he grew up in Denison, his family would take frequent trips to Dallas where "we always stayed at the same little roadside one-story motel, a typical '50s-era row of rooms right off the freeway: the Como Motel."

The good news is that Pappas Restaurants isn't ignoring the locals' pleas to preserve the motel. Robinson says company officials have met with him and other Richardson residents who don't want to see bulldozers tearing down the old-style motel "and they were interested in hearing ideas.

"They have a precedent of doing some cool things," Robinson says. "They still have [the Dot Coffee Shop] in Houston that was their first restaurant in 1967. With the Pappadeaux's on Oak Lawn [Avenue], it still has the original Lucas B&B sign in there and part of the old dining room is still intact."

Robinson says there's still a good chance that the Como Motel will stay, even if it doesn't look exactly the same.

"I don't feel like the door is closed necessarily," Robinson says. "They have an opportunity to do something incredible with that space and keep the Como Motel alive in one form or another."