EVANSVILLE — A Downtown building that for years cycled through multiple owners, code violations and financial difficulties has a new look as a modern, six-floor hotel standing above the Ohio River.
The new Holiday Inn Express at First and Walnut streets welcomes its first guests on Tuesday, adding 79 rooms to Downtown's hotel inventory.
Last year's opening of Hyatt Place, which sits a block away, tacked on 139 rooms. The five-year-old DoubleTree by Hilton has 241. The two hotels at nearby Bally's Evansville have more than 300 rooms combined.
The Convention & Visitors Bureau is working to draw more events and gatherings to fill all of those rooms, as the COVID pandemic wanes and travel increases.
"Adding 79 rooms doesn't necessarily launch us into attracting a different clientele, but what it does help us with is ancillary meeting space," said Alexis Berggren, CEO of the visitors bureau. "That’s helpful for conventions as well as a lot of sporting groups who need space for team meetings. We think it helps us enhance our current package ... It opens us up to offer more choices, and it enhances flexibility."
Berggren said the Holiday Inn Express is already showing value — a team participating in a May 27-28 bull-riding event at Ford Center will stay there.
Evansville has several large youth sports events and a national square dance convention coming this summer, but a regional convention of Jehovah's Witnesses, which typically brings thousands of guests over two weekends, is not returning until 2023 at the earliest.
Rates at the Holiday Inn Express vary depending on the room type, but in general, they are in line with other Downtown hotels, owner George Yerolemou said.
General Manager Peter Nowotny with Atlanta-based IHG Hotels & Resorts noted features such as a glass window elevator with river views, a free breakfast and a location next to RiverWalk Restaurant, in the Hadi Shrine building.
The hotel has four disabled-accessible rooms on its ground floor and 20 different room types. There's a fitness center, but no swimming pool. Nowotny said the property will cater to leisure, business and government-related travel.
"Above all, you have to have superior service," said Nowotny, whose previous management role was in Alamogordo, New Mexico. "Service trumps anything. Plus, the view we have."
The property's redevelopment was a slow process, to say the least.
Yerolemou took over the downtrodden, dilapidated building in 2012, thinking he could reopen it as a brand name hotel within a year or two.
Instead, the project happened in fits and starts due to problems with money, labor shortages, sluggish supply chains and the pandemic. Its completion date was pushed back several times.
Yerolemou said his children were very young when he bought the property, "and they're teenagers now."
Old River House history
The building was a Downtown Evansville problem for years before renovation work got rolling.
But in earlier eras, it was a renowned local business with in-house dining and ties to a hydroplane boat racing legend.
A sanitarium sat at the location in the early 20th Century. In 1961, the property was bought by Jack Kinkel, an Evansville architect. Kinkel transformed it into a motor inn called Jackson House. On amazon.com, you can buy a historic postcard of Jackson House for $13.99.
Jackson House closed in 1982 and landed in receivership. It was bought in 1984 by Robert and Alice Morris of Mount Vernon, Indiana. They renamed it River House, renovated it and added a top-floor restaurant.
A bridge above Walnut Street was added, connecting the main building to an annex.
The Morrises in 1990 sold the property to Bernie Little of Lakeland, Florida, a well-known figure in hydroplane boat racing. Evansville hosted a prominent summer racing event for years, and Little liked the property’s riverfront location. He had never been in the hotel business.
Little’s purchase of River House earned him a key to the city from then-Mayor Frank McDonald II, and a 1991 Evansville Courier headline proclaimed him “the most popular guy in town.” The sixth-floor eatery was renamed Bernie Little’s Sunset Restaurant, which became a trendy local spot for awhile.
But Little's ownership, too, had a shelf life. He sold in 1998. "As a businessman, anything is for sale if the price is right," hotel manager Joe Vezzoso Jr. told the Courier then.
Ashokabi and Pushpaben Patel bought the property but closed it in 2001, $2.8 million in debt.
Frank and Michele Peterlin became owners two years later, turning the old River House into 85 apartments. The Peterlins in 2006 moved the restaurant, which by then was called Sunset Grille, to the ground floor and converted the sixth floor into a rental event space.
The Peterlins sold in 2007 to a Seymour, Indiana, company, run by Todd Van Natta. Tin Fish opened a restaurant on the sixth floor. But that venture was short-lived, and the property's condition and reputation deteriorated.
Neighbors grew restless and frustrated. The Old Evansville Historic Association wrote in a 2008 newsletter: "With the promise of exciting Downtown development, it is disheartening to witness deterioration of this business and disturbing to view blatant crime in a business bordering the Historic Preservation Area."
Things only got worse.
Power was shut off in 2009, leaving apartment residents without air conditioning on a sweltering June day. They were moved to a hotel. Follow-up inspections by the Building Commission unearthed a laundry list of code violations.
Van Natta's group reopened the property in December 2009 as a hotel with long-term rates, along with a new manager and name: River Walk Plaza Hotel & Suites. A ground-floor bar called Tropical Isle opened.
This iteration of the property didn't even last a year.
Power was shut off again in April 2010, taxes were unpaid and foreclosure proceedings began. All the while, Van Natta's company sought a buyer without success.
While the property was in the hands of creditors, Van Natta was indicted for defrauding banks on his purchase of the old River House, as well as other Indiana properties. In 2013, Van Natta was sentenced to five years in prison.
Yerolemou emerged as the new owner in 2012, snatching up the property from a creditor for a reported $475,000. The Evansville's hotelier's previous projects include reviving a former Drury Inn at U.S. 41 and Lynch Road, which is now a Comfort Inn & Suites.
There was occasional sparring between Yerolemou and city officials over the building's safety and the slow pace of renovation work.
All of that seems forgotten now, however. The annex and bridge were removed, and the completed hotel bears little resemblance to the blighted structure that sat at First and Walnut the last several years.
"I really admire his patience," Nowotny said of Yerolemou.
Yerolemou feels a combination of pride and relief as the new Holiday Inn Express opens to guests.
"I think it's turned out great, and I'm happy to be a part of Downtown's rejuvenation," he said.