Exploring St Louis's Scariest Hotel - The Lodge Hotel & Banquets

As you probably know, I'm interested in hotels. Several years ago I stumbled across a hotel in Bridgeton MO with the scariest online reviews I've ever seen. They somehow managed to hold a flat 1 star average across 80+ reviews on TripAdvisor, and other review sites were similar. That's remarkable. For reference, the majority of hotels featured on Dan Bell's Another Dirty Room series do better. And to make it more intriguing, this place is big. 250 rooms with a large atrium and indoor pool/play areas. This past weekend, Jason and I finally drove up to Bridgeton to see if we could pop in and check the place out.

I included our reactions driving up, since I found it pretty funny. On top of being run down and looking derelict from the outside, it seemed we were the only people there. We found our way in and looked around a bit. Minus a few housekeepers, we had the place to ourselves. After a little walking around I got the feeling our presence was probably not welcomed, so we started to head out. As we were walking out the door we were confronted by a man who started asking who we were and what room we were in. I just told him we were leaving, and we immediately headed out while he stared us down through the window.

This place is something else. I wish I had the ability to look around in more detail, but it seems they keep strict tabs on visitors.

As best I can tell, this is the history of the property:

-1967, hotel opens as a Holiday Inn
-Mid 1970s, courtyard is enclosed into an atrium
-1990s, hotel is reflagged as an EconoLodge
-Late 2000s, hotel likely is booted from the brand by Choice and goes independent. They pick an easy name, "The Lodge"
-2017, for some reason Choice re-franchises the property as a Rodeway Inn
-2019, they are dropped again and become The Lodge

As of now, the place seems to be for sale and still operating as a hotel. If you know any more history on this place, I'd love to hear about it in the comments. Some fun links:

TripAdvisor - https://www.tripadvisor.com/Hotel_Rev...
Sale listing - https://www.paceproperties.com/proper...


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