The Days Inn in Oil City will be open by the Oil Heritage Festival later this month, the hotel’s general manager said Thursday.
“We are going to open the hotel. We bought it, so we will open,” said Sachin Patel, who is also the general manager of two hotels in Ohio.
Patel also said the hotel’s ownership group has been paying the bills and taxes on the building since December.
The bank was the sole bidder for the 106-room hotel at a Venango County sheriff’s sale in mid-2020.
The Shah family, Patel’s employer, owns about 20 hotels across a number of states. The Days Inn in Oil City is their only hotel in Pennsylvania, Patel said.
Patel said he has 65 rooms ready to open at the Oil City hotel, but the main reason for delay is getting the phone, TV and internet hooked up.
While Patel said the hotel can open even before the internet is hooked up, it can’t open without TV and phone service.
One wrinkle in getting phone service restored to the building is that the hotel will need to have all new phone numbers because the old phone numbers aren’t available for use, Patel said.
He added he will have the 65 rooms cleaned one more time before opening day.
The company is looking to hire local staff, Patel said. He said they are looking to hire two or three housekeepers and between three and five receptionists for the front desk.
Patel said the restaurant and bar area won’t be open at first.
“Restaurants are not my business, I’m not running it,” Patel said of the restaurant and bar.
He added that if the hotel owners can find someone to open the restaurant or bar, they would lease or rent out the space.
People interested in working at the hotel and businesses or individuals interested in operating the restaurant can contact Bhavik “Bobby” Shah, the hotel owner, at (804) 895-3857.
Patel said he plans to open the hotel pool, but the facility needs drained and refilled first.
“We will not open the swimming pool at Oil Heritage Week. We’ll try but I’m not sure it will be ready in time,” Patel said.
His original plan was to paint the pool, but that will come later either when the pool closes at the end of the season or next year.
The hotel will open even if the building hasn’t been repainted, Patel added.
“The paint is not so important. If the room is clean, they will like it,” Patel said.
New lights have also been ordered, Patel said.
The hotel was built as a five-story Holiday Inn at a cost of $1.6 million. It opened for business in August 1965 on a 3.5 acre site formerly occupied by the Pennsylvania Railroad depot and freight houses.
Those buildings were razed in a major downtown redevelopment project in the early 1960s.
The hotel was later renamed the Arlington and became part of the America’s Best Value Inn chain.
In 2013, it became a Days Inn as part of the Wyndham Hotel chain.
