User:Vchimpanzee/Dunhill Hotel

The Dunhill Hotel in Charlotte, North Carolina is a 10-story hotel at 6th and Tryon Streets built in 1929 as Mayfair Manor and designed by Louis Asbury. When it opened, it was called "an impressive addition to Charlotte`s skyline." It had 100 rooms, many occupied by doctors. The owners were J.P. Matheson and C.N. Peeler.

One effort after another to save what was called James Lee Motor Inn failed during the 1980s. Brad Holcom and Doug Patterson, as Dunhill Development Corp., were inspired by the news that several other downtown Charlotte landmarks would be demolished. Work began in August 1987 on the upscale hotel renamed the Dunhill Hotel. Also planned was a restaurant called The Thistle, using three storefronts, with the bar in the Dunhill lobby.

Dunhill Development spent an estimated $6 million to buy and restore the hotel. The Dunhill Hotel reopened in October 1988 but did not perform as well as hoped. Dunhill Development owed $500,000 to the city of Charlotte and $500,000 to the U.S. Small Business Administration, and the partners successfully reduced a $250,000 debt to other creditors to $100,000. However, they had borrowed $3.5 million from Southeastern Savings Bank but could not renegotiate due to a change in federal laws on real estate lending, and while the financial situation improved, the partners declared bankruptcy in January 1990. The hotel went into foreclosure in May 1990. Gene Singleton and Doyle Parrish of Buildecon Associates Inc. of Raleigh, North Carolina purchased the hotel in 1991 for $2.1 million, along with a parking deck and a restaurant and drug store.

In 1989, The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Historic Properties Commission declared the Dunhill historic. In 1991, the Dunhill was the first hotel in Charlotte (and as of 2016, the only hotel in the city) to be listed in the Historic Hotels of America, part of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. At that time it had 60 rooms furnished in the style of the 1920s with English and American items.