TOLEDO, Ohio — After an auction earlier this month, the now-shuttered Days Inn along Miami Street in east Toledo has new owners who aim to revamp the hotel and give it a new future.
RM International Group, a Canadian company with experience running hotels, won the Feb. 17 auction.
The new owners plan to renovate the Days Inn and give it a new appearance. They also plan to bring a franchise restaurant to the site to replace Jill's Bar and Grill and hope to make the hotel-restaurant combination an appealing stop for those traveling on nearby I-75.
The Days Inn went up for auction about six months after a Toledo Municipal Court judge ordered the hotel to close for at least a year due to criminal activity and building codes. The ruling came after the city filed a lawsuit against the hotel's owner, Toledo Nights, Inc.
In its lawsuit, the city said police were called to the hotel 182 times between January 2018 and November 2020 for reports of assault, domestic violence, fighting, disorderly conduct, theft, robbery, burglaries, and nine drug overdoses.
Neighbors had complained for years that the hotel had become a blight on the neighborhood. Nearby residents say the hotel became a haven for what they call an "unsavory" clientele. The Days Inn was the source of nonstop loud music through the night and was to blame for drug deals they saw in their own front yards and fights they witnessed in the street.
"I've seen multiple drug deals around here, we hear gunshots, we had two kids chasing after each other in the yard chasing the other one with a knife a couple years ago, trying to stab somebody. So we've had some issues around here the last few years, the hotel is definitely the issue," nearby resident Nick Duricek said when the auction was announced in January.
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