Following a sweeping $10 million renovation, Huntington finally has a real hotel!
By James E. Casto
HQ 109 | SPRING 2020
The name Hilton is one of the best known and respected in the hotel industry — and Huntington can now boast that it has a Hilton.
After purchasing Huntington’s Pullman Plaza Hotel, Batra Hospitality of Columbus, Ohio, has invested nearly $10 million to transform it into a DoubleTree by Hilton.
“The physical footprint of the hotel is the same, but from the basement to the roof there’s not a square inch that hasn’t been renovated, updated or freshened up,” said Desiree Besemer, the hotel’s director of sales. “That means totally redone guest rooms, new meeting and event spaces, new elevators, new heating and air conditioning, new carpeting and a new lobby and business center.
“Along with the new beds, furniture and TVs in the guest rooms, we had to expand the guest room bathrooms to bring them into compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act,” Besemer said. “That meant moving walls.”
The revamped 11-story, 20,000-square-foot hotel has 183 guest rooms. Dramatically contemporary in its design, the DoubleTree lobby is dominated by a giant black and white mural that covers one wall, from the floor to the ceiling. The mural shows coal mining scenes with “Huntington” spelled out in large letters superimposed on the design.
The DoubleTree has two new restaurants — Bootleggers and Doppio Albero.
“DoubleTree is known for its breakfasts, and Doppio Albero — that’s Italian for DoubleTree — features a breakfast buffet with all the works,” Besemer said. “Doppio Albero was conceived of as an Italian restaurant, but we’ve added a number of non-Italian items to the menu.”
Bootleggers is a pub and restaurant that offers both sandwiches and a full dinner menu.
“A customer favorite at Bootleggers is our Real McCoy chicken sandwich,” she said. “It has a fried chicken breast, smoked Gouda cheese, Applewood smoked bacon and Ole Smokey peach moonshine jam on a brioche bun. It’s served with your choice of French fries, sweet potato fries or chips that we make ourselves in house.”
Opening off Bootleggers is the hotel’s Grande Theatre, which seats 200 people. “It’s an ideal spot for wedding receptions, other social events or meetings,” she said. Upstairs on the second floor is the hotel’s 6,640-square-foot ballroom, which seats 600. Folding walls can be used to separate the ballroom into four smaller rooms. Down the hall from the ballroom are several small conference rooms.
The hotel has an outdoor pool and Tiki bar patio and a fitness center. It offers guests free valet parking and free shuttle service to and from Tri-State Airport and Huntington’s Amtrak station.
“We’re proud to be the first DoubleTree property in West Virginia,” Besemer said.
Batra Hospitality purchased the Pullman Plaza in early 2016. The massive renovation of the hotel took far longer and cost more — a lot more — than had been estimated. The hotel remained open through the whole renovation process.
Over the years, the Pullman Plaza was known as a convention hotel, and Besemer hopes to expand on that role.
“Also, there’s long been a special relationship between the community and this iconic hotel,” she said. “We want to continue that relationship and build on it.”
The opening of the DoubleTree writes a new chapter in a story that began nearly 50 years ago when Huntington businessman and politico Harold Frankel announced his plans to build a new hotel in downtown Huntington as part of the city’s sweeping urban renewal program.
Frankel already owned and operated a successful Holiday Inn on U.S. Route 60 East, so he had no problem obtaining a second franchise from the popular chain. Purchasing the entire 1000 block of Third Avenue for his new hotel, he and his wife, Dodi, then invested everything they had — and everything they could borrow — in building his hotel, which was plagued by construction delays and legal woes.
When his Holiday Inn finally opened in 1975, it was the talk of the town. Its highlight was the Club Pompeii, a bar and supper club designed to capture the look of the ancient Roman city that provided the club its name.
Just outside the club’s entrance stood a replica Roman chariot that was used in the famed 1963 movie Cleopatra. Inside, the club’s décor featured bubbling fountains, marble statues imported from Naples and colorful murals depicting the Romans at play. The club’s patrons were served by toga-clad waitresses. But what really had the town buzzing was the make-believe 20-foot volcano that “erupted” every hour, with a rumbling roar, clouds of smoke and flashing red and orange lights that simulated the flow of lava down the volcano’s sides.
Unfortunately, the mountain of debt that went into financing the Holiday Inn topped even the volcano. Its steadily worsening financial woes ultimately forced the Frankels out, and the hotel shut its doors. It remained closed for more than a year until a group of local businessmen came forward to purchase and reopen it as a Radisson Hotel. In the decades since, it’s operated under a series of names, most recently as the Pullman Plaza Hotel.
