Mustang Properties expanding to promote Mustang Country

In town for a visit to his various properties, surgeon and entrepreneur Dr. Shane Mangus of Indianapolis sat down with the Lovell Chronicle last week to provide an update on the various business properties in which he is involved.
Five years ago, Mangus, a Lovell native and successful transplant surgeon, started putting his money where his mouth is in regard to his long-held belief that the Lovell area is ready to take off, especially in the area of tourism and recreation, if given a little boost.
First, he purchased the old home and doctor’s office at Third and Montana and, with the help of his family, completely renovated the 1917 structure. Known as the Mustang House, the property receives top ratings from Airbnb.com, currently considered a “Guest Favorite” with a star rating of 4.93 out of 5 stars.
Next, Mangus purchased the Cattlemen Motel at Fifth and Montana in July of 2019 from the Hiser family, who had in the years previously renovated and upgrade the building. The Mangus family performed more upgrades following the purchase. Mangus has maintained the Cattlemen Motel name.
Then in August of 2019, Mangus purchased the Econo Inn on East Main in Lovell and completely renovated the property into the Lovell Travelodge, known on the Wyndam Hotels website as the Travelodge by Wyndham Lovell/Bighorns.
That property has been very successful, named in 2021 as the number four-ranked property for the second quarter of that year out of 391 Travelodge properties worldwide after opening in December of 2020.
“We spent a lot renovating the Econo Inn into the Travelodge, and it became very successful. It was one of the highest producing (properties) in the entire system,” Mangus said. “We’ve been able to keep that at essentially the same production level as far as capacity and earnings, so that’s been really beneficial.”
A restaurant followed a year or so later as Mangus purchased the Brandin’ Iron from Craig Trumbull and Bonnie Nation and renamed it the Mustang Café.
“That was a tough go, because restaurants have a very thin profit margin and you have a very cost-conscious population here,” Mangus said. “They have to be. There’s just not a lot of money floating around.
“That was difficult. I found a very good manager, Scott Nelson, and he’s been excellent. He’s got the background and has essentially taken over as general manager for all of the properties. We changed the named to Mustang Café and Barbecue, and we installed a high-end smoker there. And he’s provided consistency, both in the food but also in the workers and helped to control costs and he’s made it quite profitable now.”
Another restaurant venture is in the works, Blue Dog Pizza, at the former location of various restaurants including the Switchback Grill and the Burger Barn at the turnoff to Lovell High School. Blue Dog will offer pizza, ice cream, milkshakes, pastries and more.
“We purchased what I call ‘The Scoop’ (on West Main), and I’m really excited about that property. We’ve done all the demo (demolition). I like the facility, and of course I love the location, because it’s near the high school and you have all the teams coming and going and all of the sporting events. We’ve gutted it, and it’s got a great structure to it.
“The problem is, we did the demo, but we had the two problems we’ve had all along: finding contractors and being able to afford them, because there are so few of them and their prices are super high. And they may or may not be able to get to your project. So it’s really come to a standstill.”
A completely new electrical system has been installed, he said.
“The problems are not insurmountable. We can overcome them. It’s just finding people to do it and being able to afford that and putting it all together at one time,” he said. “I’m excited about that. I think it’s going to be a great addition, because it’s right as you come into town and so many people can access it.”
Mangus said he had hoped to have the restaurant open by last summer but invested in other opportunities that were more “turnkey,” with the restaurant now about a year away, he figures.
When finished, Blue Dog will be perfect for Lovell students and visiting teams and fans alike, Mangus said, something quick and easy and relatively inexpensive.
“I don’t like that young families can’t go out to eat in this town,” he said. “Our café, if you take your kids, you’re still going to spend a lot of money. I don’t think it’s fair. You get these young families that have kids and want to take ‘em out. If you take them for a pizza and you spend 15 bucks and get them an ice cream cone, they feel like they went out and you’ve only spent 20-25 bucks. That’s what I want. I want to give ‘em a chance to go out.”
 

Tour company
Looking ahead, Mangus noted that he purchased the old Phillips 66 property on East Main nearly across the street from the Conoco Country Store (which Mangus also purchased) and hopes to turn it into headquarters for his planned tour business, Mustang Country Tours. That property also needs work, he said, including an electrical upgrade, so that project has also stalled.
“What I’m planning on doing with that one, and again, I’m really excited about it, is that we’re probably going to start that (tour) business his summer, regardless of whether that’s ready to go or not,” he said. “We want to make a tour business and take tourists up into the Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area but also up to the mountain and Five Springs. And these are all in different governmental areas, so you have National Park Service, you have BLM, you have Forest Service, and with each of them you have to get special permits and meet their requirements.”
Along with offering tours, Mustang Country Tours will offer rentals of things like kayaks, canoes and ATVs that will allow visitors to explore the area in detail and have fun doing it.
“My idea and the reason I’m excited about it is we’ve never really taken our eye off the ball that it’s all about tourism,” Mangus said. “Tourism is outside money coming into Lovell. It’s not the locals exchanging money among themselves. It’s outside dollars, and that’s what the town really needs.
“There are a couple of ways to do that. You can convince people to come here through marketing, and that, to be frank, in my opinion, hasn’t been successful. I don’t think that drives traffic, in my opinion. So what I did, and the direction I went, was, I’m going to go get the tourists.”
That led to him purchasing the 50-room Kings Inn in Powell and renovating it into the Powell Travelodge, providing the opportunity to guide Park County visitors to the Lovell Area.
“They’ll extend. They’ll extend two or three days, because they still want to see more,” he said. “It’s been fantastic. It’s all about driving tourist traffic to here. That’s been very successful.”
With three hotels now, Mustang Properties has 95 rooms under the tourism umbrella: 50 with the Powell Travelodge, 30 with the Lovell Travelodge and 15 with the Cattlemen Motel.
Noting that the Mustang House Airbnb is full most of the time, Mangus is pleased to see other bed and breakfast properties open in the area, not seeing them as competition but as opportunities to bring more people to Lovell.
 “When somebody’s searching and they see a lot of amenities in one location, it tells them that there’s something there,” Mangus said. “It drives people to say, ‘Well, I need to stay there, because look at all of these great places.’ And so the more, the better, I feel.”
Mangus purchased the Conoco Country Store several months ago and hopes to expand the business into the longtime apartment behind the convenience store for more retail space, adding to the store’s existing reputation as “the last place to go” before heading to the lake or the mountain by offering sporting goods like fishing gear, ammunition, boating supplies and more, “anything you need to go up and enjoy the mountains and the canyon,” he said.
“Lisa Dickerson (owner) called me and asked me about taking it over,” he said. “She was ready to sell it, but she didn’t want it to go to a corporate entity. She wanted somebody who was committed to keeping everything within Lovell or the Big Horn Basin. And of course, the model for our company and has been from Day One, and we’re now five years into this, all of our profits stay here in Lovell and in the Big Horn Basin. 100 percent. Nothing goes out … We’re 100 percent. We’ve never taken money as profit and sent it somewhere else. It just stays here. And so I took over. That was in May. And we ran it all summer, and it was very successful. I’ve been very happy with it.”
 

Cody investment
As an extension of the effort to drive visitors to North Big Horn County, Mangus in recent weeks purchased a convenience store on the far west edge of Cody, Rodeo West Conoco, hoping to take advantage of what he termed the “massive” number of tourists who come to Cody from Yellowstone.
“Whereas these other towns have three or four motels, Cody has 45 – and 15 dude ranches, all the restaurants, everything – millions and millions of dollars of tourism,” he said. “That’s why I wanted to get a foothold up there, and that place that I’m buying, it just popped up, and I had a chance. It’s right between the rodeo grounds and Walmart. It’s 16,000 cars a day in the summer. It’s just tourist central.
“When you’re driving from Yellowstone into Cody, it’s the first gas station/convenience store you come to. I interviewed the people that work there, and they told me, yeah, everybody comes in here and they always ask, one, ‘How do I get to Mount Rushmore?’ and two, ‘The rooms are so expensive. Is there anywhere else to stay,’ and then, ‘OK, what do I do here?’ They get asked this all the time, and so we’re going to make a script for them and give them maps and pictures and directions and tell them Mustang Country is an area you need to go to. So many tourists come through with a lot of money in their pockets, and they want to spend it on an activity, on an adventure, on an experience that they’re going to remember forever. If I take them out to see wild horses or Devil’s Canyon, which is amazing, they’re always going to remember.”
 

Branding
One of the recent developments in Mustang Properties is a rebranding. Mangus coined the phrase “Discover Lovell” a few years ago but realized that no one beyond the region knows what or where Lovell is or can distinguish between the various small towns in the area, but people are more likely to know the Big Horn Basin and Big Horn Canyon. Thus, his company is using Mustang Country.
“If you say Mustang Country, and you show them this massive canyon, these wild horses, these amazing waterfalls, world class hunting, world class snowmobiling, that’s Mustang Country,” he said. “You’re taking ownership of all of it, and to get to any of those, guess where you have to go? Lovell, Wyoming. The entrance to Mustang Country is Lovell, Wyoming.
“Lovell doesn’t mean anything to somebody in Texas or Oklahoma or New York City. Mustang Country? But ‘Oh, mustangs? Let’s go see the mustangs.’ It’s more self-explanatory.”
Mangus said he remains bullish on Lovell.
“It’s so undiscovered still,” he said, noting that he enjoys working hand in hand with other properties in town like the Horseshoe Bend Motel.
“I want this to be a tourist mecca,” he said. “I want people to come in here, because what happens? If we have a hundred rooms in town or 150 when you include Powell, we can start to bring in conferences and symposiums and groups. We have a lot of groups that come through. We’ve actually had a couple of tour companies who are bringing busloads and want to stay here and go see things and then continue on their way. So we’re trying to recruit more of those.
“It’s just starting out. I really feel like we had to get the infrastructure in place – consistent restaurants, high quality motels with good rooms. And we do have that now. We really have not truly marketed at all. Zero. And so that’s where we want to focus, marketing and getting the people here.
“That’s why I want to bring them from Cody and take them down, and once we do, they’re going to talk about it and put it in their Instagrams and their Facebooks and their whatever. And they’re going to refer more people to us. We’re all working together to make this successful.”