Late Night Real Estate: A Permanent Holiday in Illinois
There are a lot of flashy, faded roadside motels for sale right now, and to be honest? We here at Late Night Real Estate didn’t expect to pick this one in Olney, Illinois. There were Florida motels with “Adventure” in the name, and school-themed rooms in Arizona, but this one, well, it has a few extra-special qualities. The Holiday Motel & Restaurant offers a baroque event hall befitting of an early Coen Brothers movie, an indoor pool with a mysterious mountain mural, and a restaurant/lounge situation with a fried-fish-and-veggies buffet and casino games.
At the entrance, visitors are greeted with two white squirrels with tails entwined into a heart. Late Night Real Estate thought this was a warm Midwestern touch, but it turns out that the town of Olney is known as “the home of the white squirrel” because of their unusually high population of albino squirrels. The best qualities about The Holiday Motel & Restaurant are, as you might expect, the older parts they haven’t renovated. The lobby is painted and tiled in hospital-suite colors, but this can be undone! The event rooms, of which there are three, shine in the dark and, as the reviews indicate, have been home to many school reunions. As the owner, you can help countless Southeastern Illinois residents have their Romy and Michele moment amid the Astroturf and brick.
This place used to be a Holiday Inn and it shows! The morning-to-night roadside vacation energy that gets you biscuits and gravy in the morning, an AstroTurf-ed pool midday, and a lounge (The Tailwind where Rod or Amy will make you a drink!) for the parents at night. The rooms are classic economical fare—”cotton/poly blended cover holds up to the rigors of commercial use”—a Ramada Inn personality.
You would not guess from these rooms the festive atmosphere of the rest of the hotel/convention center! The indoor pool features a lit-up gazebo, more Astroturf, strategically placed plants, and a mural with some geometric shapes. Entertainment such as Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers impersonators take place poolside. “The operation really has four separate revenue streams that are interconnected and stable,” the LoopNet description reads.
It’s clear from customer reviews and the motel’s website that this place has run lovingly by its owners, who are retiring after “10 plus” years. The Holiday is the equivalent of not great-but-good American comfort food—a meatloaf-and-mashed-potatoes situation. Someone visiting the motel in 2017 described the restaurant as having “the feeling that this was the place to go on the weekend for dinner with family.”
The Yelp reviews paint a more vivid image. Gwen M.—former Olney gal, current California gurl—compares the Holiday to a “dowager great aunt who wears too much floral perfume, annoying and stinky but you have to love her because she’s been so generous and given so much to the whole family and community.” Les D. describes the saga of the motel/banquet hall as one of “struggle, death, and resurrection” after a former owner left it to become derelict. It is, Les notes, the only large gathering location in the region.
If you’d like to get to know the people of Southeastern Illinois and continue to ensure they have a place to gather, consider making yourself a part of the Olney community as owner and operator of The Holiday for $1,290,000.
