GARY — Early in his first year as mayor of Gary in 1968, Richard Hatcher’s phone rang at 1 a.m.
Holiday Inn was calling. An executive with the national chain told Hatcher it planned to erect a hotel at 461 Broadway, just south of City Hall.
On Feb. 18, 1971, Holiday Inn tossed a surprise, soft opening that drew city and county politicians and local businessmen who undoubtedly toasted the 14-story hotel’s prominence and potential.
Hatcher proclaimed it “the gateway to the city’s future.”
Suburbs emerge
About seven miles to the south another Holiday Inn had already sprouted in a cornfield off Interstate 65 in what would become the town of Merrillville.
As Gary’s population drifted south, Merrillville became a town 1971, ending all possibility of a Gary annexation.
By then, the door had slammed shut on Gary’s new gateway. The Holiday Inn closed abruptly at 12:01 a.m. Jan. 31, 1975, sending 68 employees to the unemployment line.
“This location just does not draw people. I don’t know why,” said Charles Barnette, a hotel spokesman in a Post-Tribune story. Hatcher received a letter signed only by “Holiday Inns, Inc.” citing economic problems.
Propped up with city support, the it reopened three years later as the Sheraton Hotel, but couldn’t survive. It closed in 1985 and the vacant hotel hasn’t welcomed a paying guest in nearly 30 years.
Demolition ahead
In a city with more than 10,000 abandoned and crumbling buildings, the Sheraton stands out to many, including Mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson, as Public Eyesore No. 1.
Sometime next month, officials say the downtrodden hotel is destined become another footnote in the city’s history.
In the dead of night, with bright flood lights illuminating its doom, workers will begin the serious work of razing the structure, one floor at a time.
By next summer, city officials say a bucolic grassy plaza will replace the grandiose high-rise where a fancy restaurant, elegant bar and rooftop swimming pool once anchored Broadway.
Planning missteps
Urban planners shake their heads as they rattle off obvious pitfalls of the downtown hotel. There was no interstate access. The Indiana Toll Road was nearby, but it didn’t have a Broadway exit. There was no convention center or strong business reason for clientele to stay at the hotel. The local newspaper spotlighted crime regularly.
Hatcher insisted plans for the hotel came before his watch in the early 1960s. Hatcher felt the convention center should have come first, but the Genesis Center was still on the drawing board.
Meanwhile, the downtown began to lose its retail appeal to shoppers who flocked to indoor shopping malls in suburbs far from the urban core.
Gary’s population peaked at 180,000 in 1960. But its leaders were slow to respond to improve its downtown that hadn’t seen a new building since the 1920s. Other Rust Belt cities snapped up federal urban renewal money, but Gary lagged behind, said historian Robert A. Catlin.
Finally, in 1962, the city came up with what Catlin termed a “halfhearted” effort to capture federal money with a project called “Gateway.” It consisted of 2.4 acres of downtown land acquired from 1963-66. The Holiday Inn was built on part of that land in 1969.
Fate sealed
Hatcher says he never attached much credence to the notion the Holiday Inn would change the face of downtown Gary.
“I’m not sure any of us had that kind of prophetic vision,” he said. “The feeling was we needed a hotel and a good one in downtown Gary.”
Hatcher said the city figured the hotel could be successful if executives from U.S. Steel stayed there. City leaders felt it would give the city a lift and provide confidence for others to visit downtown.
U.S. Steel quickly abandoned the experiment after the hubcaps were stolen from the car of an executive who stayed at the hotel.
With the city’s population shrinking, Gary historian and university professor James B. Lane arrived in 1970.
“The downtown was already pretty dead,” Lane said. “Its fate was settled by the time the hotel went up.”
Sheraton arrives
After the Holiday Inn closed, a group of local businessmen mounted another effort to reopen the it.
In 1978, it underwent a $2.5 million renovation and reincarnation as the Sheraton Hotel.
Steel City Plaza, a private investment firm of Hatcher allies, signed a 20-year lease to operate it. A press kit heralded its Gazebo restaurant as the place to find a “Taste of the 80s-Today.”
The hotel lost money for two years and Steel City Plaza wanted out. The city agreed to waive the company’s taxes and pay the hotel’s utility costs.
Steel City went bankrupt in 1985 and hundreds of workers again lost jobs.
The Sheraton’s restaurant and lounge stayed open until 1987, although allegations surfaced they were run illegally with money from a federal job training program.
In 1989, three people were convicted of illegally diverting about $145,000 in job-training money into a company to operate the lounge and restaurant.
Hatcher left office in 1988. The three mayors who followed him all attempted to reopen the Sheraton without success.
In retrospect
“We tried to make it work for the city, but the economic dynamics weren’t there,” said former mayor Thomas V. Barnes who followed Hatcher.
Hatcher and Barnes both say they’re glad to see Mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson make good on her campaign promise to bring the Sheraton down.
“It certainly has to be better than having this vacant building sitting there,” said Hatcher. I would like to see downtown Gary really rebuild and grow, that’s why I think the mayor is doing the right thing in tearing it down.”
There’s a photograph of the Sheraton hanging in Freeman-Wilson’s office. When the Sheraton comes down, the mayor said, the photograph will come down, as well, a symbol of a new chapter for the city.