Historic Gables Motor Lodge sells for $850,000. Singer Tift Merritt is one of the buyers.
The historic Gables Motor Lodge in Raleigh has been sold.
Hotel developer Daniel Robinson and musician Tift Merritt — who have plans to rejuvenate the former lodge on Old Wake Forest Road — bought the property for $850,000, according to TradeMark Properties, which helped facilitate the deal.
The hotel has been vacant since 2017 but will once again begin accepting guests after the new owners complete their renovations of the hotel.
The lodge, which dates back to 1925, has been on the market since 2017, originally with a list price of $1.5 million. That list price was further whittled down to $1 million last year, before selling this month for $850,000.
In its heyday, the Gables Motel Lodge was one of the hotels that sprouted up on U.S. 1, which passed directly through the city’s Mordecai neighborhood, carrying travelers between New York and Florida.
Robinson, who is known for his work with The Durham Hotel in downtown Durham, said he wasn’t ready to comment on plans for the lodge, adding that they would release more information next month.
But previously he told The News & Observer that the history of the building was too intriguing to pass up.
“I think it would be fair to say that my involvement in, and experience with, The Durham influences the way I think about the Gables,” Robinson said at the time. “However, this is by no means an extension of The Durham. Tift is a dynamic, creative force — and to try to limit what we can do collectively through any form of replication would be foolish on my part.”
Until 2016, the motel’s previous owner, 93-year-old Charlie Griffin, was still renting out rooms.
After he died in August 2016, his great-nephew, Tommy Flynn, put the motel up for sale in accordance with Griffin’s wishes.
The half-acre lot includes 19 bedrooms, 13 bathrooms and a two-car garage distributed among three buildings. The property itself blends in with the other older homes in the Mordecai neighborhood, except for its large metal sign in the front of the building. Previously, Robinson has said he would like to incorporate the sign in the hotel’s future.
The Gables renovation is one of several boutique lodging options that are being added to the downtown Raleigh area.
The new owners of Montfort Hall, a pre-Civil-War-era mansion in the Boylan Heights neighborhood, are going through a rezoning process to turn the historic home into a boutique inn and event space. And in the downtown core, Raleigh development group Loden Properties is turning an old Days Inn motor-lodge into a hip hotel and restaurant.
This story was originally published February 19, 2019 at 4:09 PM with the headline "Historic Gables Motor Lodge sells for $850,000. Singer Tift Merritt is one of the buyers.."