ST. GEORGE — Fenced off and covered in tarps while demolition work can be heard taking place from inside, the former homes of The Inn at St. George and the Bicycle Collective are set to be torn down by the city soon.
Over five years after buying the property with an intent to one day see it redeveloped, Marc Mortensen, St. George assistant city manager, told St. George News on Thursday that the city is now moving on that goal.
With demolition set around the end of February, crews are currently going through the old hotel to remove lead asbestos found inside it, as well as the former Bicycle Collective building.
The city will also be back-filling the hotel’s pool and the basement of the other building and covering them over with road base to help keep the dust down, Mortensen said.
Once this is done, the city will be reaching out to developers to see who is interested in developing the property that sits on St. George Boulevard next door to Ancestor Square.
“It’s obviously a prime piece of property in the heart of our downtown area and a great piece of property for development,” Mortensen said.
A mix of retail and a restaurant, or perhaps even a new hotel or some sort of housing could be built there, he said, and also mentioned the possibility for another mixed use development like Joule Plaza or City View, the latter of which is across the street..
The City of St. George bought The Inn at St. George in late 2016 for $1.6 million. Though the city owned the property, it was privately operated for about a year afterward.
Later, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the hotel was converted by the Switchpoint Community Resource Center into a quarantine shelter for homeless individuals who had contracted the coronavirus.
The hotel was originally called the TraveLodge Inn and opened sometime between 1961 and 1972, according to the Washington County Historical Society. It was also known as the Ancestor Inn and St. George Best Inn.
Around the time the city bought the hotel, it was also in the process of buying the neighbor building that once housed the St. George Bicycle Collective. The Collective has since relocated to 39 Bluff St. in St. George.
Before then, it served as the home of an Intermountain Healthcare thrift store that eventually transitioned into the Switchpoint Thrift Store in 2016 and changed locations. Long before that, the building was the site of the Trafalga restaurant which was also served as a Greyhound bus stop for a time.
Photo Gallery
The former Inn at St. George and building housing the St. George Bicycle Collective are set to be torn down near the end of February as the city plans to have the area redeveloped, St. George, Utah, Jan. 20, 2022 | Photo by Mori Kessler, St. George News
The former Inn at St. George and building housing the St. George Bicycle Collective are set to be torn down near the end of February as the city plans to have the area redeveloped, St. George, Utah, Jan. 20, 2022 | Photo by Mori Kessler, St. George News
The former Inn at St. George and building housing the St. George Bicycle Collective are set to be torn down near the end of February as the city plans to have the area redeveloped, St. George, Utah, Jan. 20, 2022 | Photo by Mori Kessler, St. George News
The former Inn at St. George and building housing the St. George Bicycle Collective are set to be torn down near the end of February as the city plans to have the area redeveloped, St. George, Utah, Jan. 20, 2022 | Photo by Mori Kessler, St. George News
Prior state of the Inn as St. George and Bicycle Collective building, St. George, Utah, date unspecified | Photo courtesy of Google Maps, St. George News
Prior state of the Inn as St. George and Bicycle Collective building, St. George, Utah, date unspecified | Photo courtesy of Google Maps, St. George News
Prior state of the Inn as St. George and Bicycle Collective building, St. George, Utah, date unspecified | Photo courtesy of Google Maps, St. George News
Prior state of the Inn as St. George and Bicycle Collective building, St. George, Utah, date unspecified | Photo courtesy of Google Maps, St. George News
Copyright St. George News, SaintGeorgeUtah.com LLC, 2022, all rights reserved.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mori Kessler serves as a Senior Reporter for St. George News, having previously contributed as a writer and Interim Editor in 2011-12, and an assistant editor from 2012 to mid-2014. He began writing news as a freelancer in 2009 for Today in Dixie, and joined the writing staff of St. George News in mid-2010. He enjoys photography and won an award for photojournalism from the Society of Professional Journalists for a 2018 photo of a bee inspector removing ferals bees from a Washington City home. He is also a shameless nerd and has a bad sense of direction.