The Longleaf Hotel is open for business as downtown Raleigh’s new northern gateway
Formerly an uneventful Days Inn that sat at the northern gateway to downtown Raleigh for decades, the newly opened Longleaf Hotel now welcomes drivers into downtown with bright neon letters reminiscent of the property’s mid-century motor lodge past.
The renovation of the hotel into a vintage-style 57-room motor lodge with modern twists is a first for LODEN Properties, the Raleigh-based developer that undertook the project.
“We knew we wanted to bring it back to life and keep that mid-century, modern kind of thing happening,” said Christine McDonald, creative director at LODEN Properties. “We didn’t want it to look like you were walking back in time necessarily, but to pay homage to the 1960s. To have a look and feel of that era but not be a period piece.”
Featuring vintage decor and preservation of original architecture from the motor lodge’s origin in 1964, the boutique hotel has a lounge for guests and local patrons serving drinks and coffee.
At an opening event Wednesday night, the Longleaf Hotel’s staff and owners couldn’t show invited guests all of the different room types because at least 40 rooms already had been booked.
The rooms start at $179 a night and range from double-bed to king-size bed options, including one available king suite.
“I think independent hotels, by their nature, are more exciting for a community to open,” said Russ Jones, a partner at LODEN Properties. “I think the city’s needing a mix of buildings, to the extent that we can save some that are unique. When we first put the property in a contract, the assumption was that we were going to tear it down.”
The Triangle has shown a recent taste for boutique hotels like The Longleaf. The last few years have seen the rise of boutique hotels such as The Durham Hotel, the 21c Museum Hotel and the Unscripted opening in downtown Durham within a block of each other.
Jones said that if they had gone through a process like most developers in getting funding from outside equity sources, they’d have torn down the former Days Inn to rezone and build something else.
“We have local investors whom we’ve worked with on other projects that have put a certain amount of trust in us that we can do something outside of the ordinary and make it pay off,” he added.
At Wednesday’s opening, Ashley Freeman, a foodie who operates the @raleighfoodpics Instagram account that showcases local Raleigh restaurants, said she was considering staying at The Longleaf, although she lives in Raleigh. Freeman likes to go on “staycations,” which she has done at other Triangle boutique hotels.
“I thought it was cute,” Freeman said of a showcased room at the hotel. “I like the retro vibe, like an old hotel. It’s definitely a good spot. It’s in downtown, basically.”
The hotel will have an adjoining restaurant called (ish) Delicatessen at Longleaf, operated by Matt Fern, who was the longtime beverage director of Ashley Christensen’s AC Restaurants, The News & Observer previously reported.
LODEN Properties also owns and operates more conventional hotels, like the Aloft Durham Downtown hotel and The Hampton Inn & Suites near the new Wegmans in Midtown.
This story was originally published February 20, 2020 at 5:45 AM.
