It has been a long time coming, but the former North Randall Holiday Inn/Days Inn is finally coming down, asbestos and all. For years now the city has wanted to redevelop the area, but due to the high amounts of asbestos inside the building, it was difficult (but mostly expensive) to do much of anything. In 2016 several companies had acquired sections of the 160-acre area of land where Randall Park Mall once sat. Industrial Commerce Properties Corp. of Solon and Industrial Realty Group of California had taken over the hotel as part of the huge Amazon Warehouse project. As of 2019, the companies have finally put efforts into its demolition.

The 10-story, 300-room hotel was built by the DeBartolo Corporation – a notable mall developer. It was the first part of a five-phase development plan for the site that would eventually be home to the Randall Park Mall. The hotel opened its doors in October 1972, and would run for years as a Holiday Inn until later changing hands in the 1980s.

In 1988, Days Inn took over ownership of the hotel, but would only operate for the next three years until finally closing in 1991. The hotel then sat abandoned for the next 7 years until being purchased by the village of North Randall. Their initial hopes were to transform it into a new village hall, but plans fell through. On August 8, 2004 at 3:34pm alarms went off when a fire broke out inside the vacant hotel. Fire crews responded within 5 minutes, and were able to extinguish the fire before it did too much damage to the building.

Over the years, Randall Park Mall continued a steady decline as crime rates went up, and online shopping started to kill much of the physical (or outside of the Internet) retail market. With this decline, the property became even more undesirable for developers as they saw less potential in bringing the area back to even close to what it was in earlier years. Ironic that it would eventually be purchased and redeveloped by Amazon – one of the main contributing factors of its downfall.

Remnants from its days as a Days Inn remained scattered along the trashed rooms and hallways when I had first explored the building. A room full of lamps collected was one of the more known parts to explorers and photographers who would visit the abandoned hotel.