Is preferrable to demolish/build.
This hotel last had a major renovation about 20 years ago and it felt pretty nice and fresh at the time. I believe another major renovation can achieve the same result.
It is a quirky building and IMO quirky is good - we don’t have enough of it in this town.
I give this idea a 
At LEAST. That’s why I’m vomit-reacting to this update. It’s SUCH a waste of space in its current state.
Yeah it’s an interesting building, and not every hotel downtown needs to be $350+ a night. But agreed with the above, can we do something about the almost always empty huge parking lot at least.
The lot east of the Holiday Inn should honestly be big enough for a tower. Put the Kimpton there FFS. It’s a half acre lot, can fit a decently efficient parking garage (which is often the most difficult component when making something fit in a given lot - so there should be no reason they have to tear down the Holiday Inn in order to have enough space.
Below is a parking deck design of almost the exact dimensions of this lot.
Slight modification + add an elevator core gives you 53 spaces per level. Seven levels up and you get 371 spaces. Go a level or two down and you can get more.
son of a bitch…
I guess not surprised but still. Can anything decent that’s planned ever actually get built in the core of downtown?
Pendo building? New City Hall?
there is room for a tower besides the landmark round Holiday Inn. There are only a handful of these round Holiday Inns left and I think it should be saved and a new tower can be built on that vacant lot. It could be renovated and made into a Kimpton or another boutique brand.
High end chains like the Kimpton won’t touch it because of the low ceilings. You need a funkier, cheaper brand.
One is half a project and the other got downgraded, but yes, we’ve gotten 2 decent buildings in the downtown core in the last however many years. Yay…
Maybe not but there are plenty of chains that would
Like Tribute by Marriott hotels https://tribute-portfolio.marriott.com/
or a Motto or Graduate by Hilton (which locate near major universities hello NC State)
https://www.hilton.com/en/brands/
Or it here is one brand a lot closer to Raleigh an Accor hotel 21 C Museum and Hotel like downtown Durham. https://all.accor.com/hotel/B508/index.en.shtml The French hotel chain could make that old round Holiday Inn shine again I am sure.
I’m arriving tonight and will report back on current room conditions. Suspiciously cheap rate…
Edit: one of the two elevators is broken, with an incredibly vague letter posted that doesn’t exactly promise anything in particular:
If actual elevator repair commences before February, that would seem to me to be a sure sign that the building’s staying.
Otherwise, the room was in better working order than I expected, and the views are great.
It is always disappointing when things get downgraded, but there actually has been a good bit of activity in Downtown over the past several years.
We haven’t gotten a new tallest (or even anything close to the downtown big three), but I count at least 11 buildings with ten stories or more that have been built in the last six years or are currently under construction. And that doesn’t include Raleigh City Hall, these are things that are well under construction and rising out of the ground.
I’d you’re including Hub I’d add The Weld as well
Not going to let your optimism stop me from being a
Talking about things since 2020, since that was arguably the year everything changed and we’re still nowhere near back to normal in terms of building. And I’m talking about the downtown core, not peripheral areas. It’s obviously nice to see the density expand outwards, but that’s also where the cheaper land is. I’m thinking of all the empty parking lots and stalled/cancelled plans around the downtown core.
Anyways we’ve got the 2 I mentioned.
Raleigh City Hall - yes. downgraded and value engineered from its original plan, but still very happy for this one.
Raleigh Crossing/Pendo: 19 story office built in 2021 - mentioned this one, but it’s only half the project and left an empty lot and gaping parking deck side.
Then there’s these that are in the downtown core:
Maeve: 20 story multifamily. Topped out. Should deliver next spring. - forgot about this one. This has been a nice addition.
400H: 20 story office and multifamily. 2023. - forgot about this one too. Also nice.
Tempo: 11 story hotel. Topped out. Delivering early 2025 - It’s been planned/under construction since dinosaurs roamed the earth, but yes this is good. Too bad it’s got empty lots surrounding it because everything else fell through. You mentioned Homewood Suites, but that’s the same building as Tempo…
Tower 2: 10 story office. Built in 2021. Was already underway before the pandemic.
Wait - what happened in 2020? 
Kimpton had a bunch of hotels in DC in the pre-IHG years, many of which were converted 1960s-1970s studio apartment blocks repainted in bright colors. What’s now the Kimpton Banneker (originally a Quality Inn) was memorably “Hotel Rouge,” whose theme was red everywhere, offset by white plaster statues. The effect was more bordello than museum.
IHG has another brand for the “upscale” market segment (Smith Travel Research’s term, not mine) that’s pricier than “upper midscale” Holiday Inn but less selective than “upper upscale” Kimpton. I recently stayed at the partially-rebranded Holiday Inn in downtown Chicago, half of which is now IHG’s Voco brand. The rooms are indiscernible, besides the color scheme. Voco is intended as a conversion brand; only the F&B offer at the HI Raleigh would require substantial construction to meet its standards, and that could even be shared with the new Kimpton next door (as the Chicago dual-brand does). I guess in theory they could also just renovate the rooftop restaurant to provide that F&B space.
In looking at the Voco by IHG brand I saw and remembered Hotel Indigo which is a mid market hotel brand that would work for the round Holiday Inn too. Point is there are many hotel brands from Hilton, Marriott or even IHG that would fit the old Holiday Inn after a remodel. I hope it stays as I do think it is a landmark just like the one in Charleston SC is as well.
https://www.ihg.com/voco/hotels/gb/en/reservation?msockid=1c0c9696d6636dd1300c838dd7356cae
any chance some group similar to what has happened with the Longleaf could do a neat legacy remod/preservation?
Give up on Raleigh like I did and move to Pittsboro. We can be neighbors and constantly troll the overly optimistic peeps on here. It would be glorious.
