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Holiday/Days/Heaven On Earth Inn At 801 St. Joseph Pkwy.


MontroseNeighborhoodCafe

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  • 3 months later...

I live in college station but i come to houston A LOT. i was on I-45 with my cousin and was looking out the window at downtown and i noticed a particularly sorry looking building. I looked like one of those buildings in Sarajevo or Baghdad. It had that 60's modular concrete look and had a lot of broken glass. It was Pretty Tall and had a parking garage at its base and the word "hotel" was all that was left of the lettering on it. I know it is not the savoy hotel but i think its somewhat close to it. its retangular and the front(i didnt see the back) had glass windows from midway up the floors and the windows went all the way across the front. but as i said earlier most were broken. Obviously its out of business. i wonder if they will blow it up or just let it sit. Its kind of creepy seeing a somewhat modern high rise all decrepit and abandoned.

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If it was around 30 stories it sounds like it was the old Days Inn. There are plans to renovate it into condos. I am not sure how concrete these plans are though.

Edit: Heres some pics of what I described so you can see if thats it.

http://www.emporis.com/en/wm/bu/?id=117658

Edit again:

heres what the renovation will look like,

daysinnrendering.jpg

Heres the thread.

I guess all this doesn't help though if it is the wrong building. :(

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dont worry, when something happens to this building, it wont look like that rendering.

i surely hope not, while taking the lightrail past that building today, i had that rendering in mind -- it would be a shame. not only would it be horribly out of place, most of my favorite downtown buildings are near this one. they could certainly do something mod to it with less work, on the outside at least.

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im just saying that that rendering was released last year and i know that that wont be whats done. I have no idea when something will happen to this building, but it sure doesnt make financial sense for someone to buy it and demo the building, youd be better off buying raw land near it and building ground up. someone will ultimatly convert it into condos or something.

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  • 3 weeks later...
Yep, the building was originally a Holiday Inn, and the street was originally Calhoun.  My favorite was its last name, the Heaven on Earth Inn.  It was owned by some Maharishi.

Well you never know. The old Hilton Hotel here in Dallas near SMU and across the street from Mockingbird Station (Central and Mockingbird) was ownedby some Maharishi until last year. The hotel was bought by a developer and is now being converted in Palomar Hotel and residents by a new developer. Prices starting at something like 350,000 up to a couple million for the condos. This is all being built on the idea of the transit mall at Mockingbird Station. So you never know.

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The Holiday Inn-Days-Inn-Heaven on Earth inn was lastly the Plaza Downtown. It was "converted" to low income housing in the mid 90s and was constantly having problems with police and inspectors. They finally vacated everyone (about 180 residents) from the Plaza because of things like no working fire alarms, no fire extinguishers (they say tenants were reselling them on the streets) and no hot water.

Anyhow, since then, it has sat and collected dust and there have been plans to redo it, but like many other projects, nothing has taken off.

And from 1990-1996, a couple of people died there (both on the 22nd floor...creepy!)
Ref: Houston Chronicle - April 23, 1996, Slain man identified
Houston Chronicle - April 15, 1997, Hotel given time to correct problems/Last-minute cash relieves worst ills
Houston Chronicle - February 19, 1990, Man dies in fall from downtown hotel

Edited by sevfiv
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Does anyone else recall this building having been converted to low income housing in the mid-90s? Are you sure you are not thinking of the other former Holiday Inn that is just west of downtown along the Memorial/Allen Parkway corridor? I believe it was converted to housing for the elderly sometime in the mid-to-late 90s. As far as I can remember, the former Holiday Inn/Days Inn/Heaven on Earth Inn has been empty since it was last a hotel, and has never been converted into anything.

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From what I remember it was effectively taken over by squatters, who were even operating the hotel switchboard. They got away with it because the ownership was in legal limbo for a while.

Btw now that St Joseph's hospital is being sold they should change the street name back to Calhoun.

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i will be happy when it is calhoun again :D

it was reported that the "tenants" were paying rent in some form - i suppose to the maharishi that still own it now...the police said that they couldn't find anyone "in charge" and that no one was in the 20th floor office of the maharishi institute when they went there to investigate some complaints.

i suppose it is about the same today, except people have to find new and unusual ways in now...heh

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  • 4 weeks later...

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