The Inn at Middletown, a new hotel on Main St. provides an upscale accommodation for those visiting Middletown, especially Wesleyan parents who wish to stay near the campus.

Once completed, the five-story inn will offer 100 guest rooms, three conference rooms, a workout room, a pool, a jacuzzi, a restaurant and a pub.

The guest rooms are comparable to those of any upscale hotel, featuring 12 suites, each containing a small living room connected to a bedroom. The hotel also offers one Presidential Suite consisting of a bedroom and a living room large enough to entertain guests. Of the 83 regular guest rooms, 63 contain two queen-sized beds, and 20 have one king-sized bed.

Many of the rooms have scenic views of the Connecticut River and the Colonial-era houses across the street from the inn.
In keeping with the hotel’s colonial New England surroundings, all of the rooms are decorated in what Laura Falt, director of sales at the hotel, describes as a “traditional colonial style.”

The hotel’s circular lobby is one of its most striking features. A chandelier hangs from the ceiling one story above the front desk, illuminating the marble floor and the widely curving staircase leading up to the second level. In the north wing of the hotel, is the soon to be completed Tavern at the In—a restaurant and pub which will serve what Falt referred to as “traditional New England cuisine.”
“We’re looking at doing prime rib, baked lobster,” said Falt, adding that the Tavern should be open by the end of the month.

Above the lobby, there is a large banquet area. The space serves as an anteroom to two large meeting rooms, one named the Wesleyan Room and the other the Weitzman room, after the family that sold the building to the developer who built the hotel. Each meeting room is capable of holding 90 people, and, along with a third meeting room in the hotel’s basement, will be used to host a variety of events.

“We can do everything from holiday parties for local corporations…[to] social events to meetings to smaller association meetings, whether it’s for business or pleasure,” Falt said. “We’re working a lot with the…area banquet halls that do larger weddings; sometimes we get their rehearsal dinners and showers.”

The basement of the hotel houses a yet to be completed pool, a jacuzzi and a weight room adequately equipped with treadmills and stationary bikes. Once fully opened, the hotel will employ eighty people. While some of the employees, and especially the members of the management team, were brought in from outside the city, according to Falk.

The building that now houses the hotel is one of the city’s historical sites. It was built in 1810 as the private residence of the president of the Middletown National Bank. In 1912, the State of Connecticut purchased the building, turning it into an armory for the State’s National Guard. The Guard used the space from 1912 to 1992, renovating the building and adding two wings, one of which was used as a gymnasium and the other as a space for drilling practice.

After the Guard moved out in 1992, the building was neglected for three years until 1995 when the City of Middletown received Federal grant money to renovate the building’s façade. In 1997, Jerry and Babs Weitzman, the owners of Pelton’s Drugstore, bought the building from the City with the dream of turning it into a cultural center. After their sudden death in a car accident, their stepson Neil Allan took control of the property and pursued the idea of opening a hotel in the building, an idea that the Weitzman’s had been considering.

Allan sold the building to Robert Freedman, the owner and developer of the hotel. Freedman owns two other hotels in Conneticut, Norwich Comfort Suites in Norwich and the Nathan Hale Inn and Conference Center near the campus of the University of Connecticut. The Weitzman family still owns the property that the hotel sits on.

With its doors open for just over a week, the inn has been able to rent out nearly all of the available rooms over the Homecoming/Family Weekend, as many families of Wesleyan students visited the city.

“We started out very strong, given that it was parent’s weekend [at Wesleyan.]” Falt said. “Overall, I think everyone [the guests] was really happy.”

The University has been instrumental in bringing the inn to Middletown, and supporting it financially. According to Falt, the University’s support of the Inn did not end with its opening.

“We’re getting phenomenal support from the various academic departments that have business coming into the area,” she said.