Oil City manager Mark Schroyer confirmed Friday that the city and the Oil Region Alliance have reached a tentative agreement with Oil City Hospitality to purchase the former Days Inn in the city.
Schroyer said a “major announcement” regarding the hotel will be coming at Thursday’s Oil City Council meeting.
Schroyer had said previously that the city, ORA and other organizations had met earlier this month with the Shah family, which runs Oil City Hospitality, the LLC that currently owns the hotel building.
But Schroyer also said all options are being considered.
The projected sale price for the former Days Inn is about $499,000 plus closing costs, Schroyer said.
The next step would be for Oil City Council to give its approval for the hotel purchase, Schroyer said. The panel meets again on Thursday.
It was put back on the market in May, and Oil City Hospitality was asking for $2.5 million for the five-story hotel in downtown Oil City by Veterans Bridge along the Allegheny River.
In 2021, Oil City Hospitality, a Richmond, Virginia-based company, purchased the property for $250,000 from First Western SBLC Inc. of Dallas.
The bank was the sole bidder for the 106-room riverfront hotel at a Venango County sheriff’s sale in mid-2020.
Though Oil City Hospitality’s Bhavik Shah and Days Inn General Manager Sachin Patel repeatedly told the newspaper the hotel would re-open at some point, it has remained closed and vacant these last few years.
The hotel was built as a five-story Holiday Inn at a cost of $1.6 million and opened for business in August 1965.
The hotel was later renamed the Arlington and became part of the America’s Best Value Inn chain. Then in 2013 it became a Days Inn as part of the Wyndham Hotel chain.
