Signature Inn Peoria, Illinois and Detroit, Michigan

I have not visited either the Peoria or Detroit locations, so I have no photos of them.  I am again creating a double post to make up for the lack of pictures.

aerial imagery courtesy of Bing maps

map graphic courtesy of signature-inns.com at archive.org

The Peoria, Illinois, Signature Inn was one of four hotels built in 1988.  It contains 124 rooms, which was about the standard, give or take a couple, for those built during that time.

One thing I found of particular interest was that a lot of previous references to this hotel showed a co-branding with Best Western.  I couldn't really tell when it started, but it looked like the Best Western references were gone as of mid-2009.  Also, I was unable to pinpoint when the Jameson name replaced the Signature name, but I can only surmise it was in 2006 when the Jameson name appeared on a lot of the other inns.

This hotel was one of the final seven hotels remaining with the chain, sold in late December 2012 or early January 2013. Since then, it has been a Quality Inn.

Also notable is that the hotel appeared to retain its Signature Inn charm for quite some time.  However, I found a Google capture that shows some significant work had been done.

The exterior walls of the hotel were re-done, as was the roof.  Perhaps even more significant than those two changes were the enclosure over the pool and the heavy renovation to the canopy.

The Detroit, Michigan, location was one of five locations opened in 1987.  Depending on who you ask, this location was referred to as either Detroit or Romulus.  This was on the larger side of the hotels, with 135 rooms.

This hotel missed the changeover to the Jameson flag.  It was sold in 1992 as Signature Inn was exiting its financial troubles and bankruptcy of 1990-1991.  It became a Hampton Inn in early 1992; it was later known as the Lexington Hotel and is currently a LaQuinta Inn.

classified ad from The Detroit News and Free Press, 4/5/1992, mentioning a Hardee's open house.  By this time, the Detroit/Romulus had become a Hampton Inn.  Warren, mentioned a couple posts ago, would hang on for about another year.
courtesy newspapers.com

I am not sure when this building was renovated from its Signature Inn look, but as of 2011, it's still fairly recognizable:

Sometime between July 2011 and July 2015, this property received another renovation.  This time, even more of the Signature Inn look was stripped away, leaving us with:

I almost didn't recognize the property myself!  I had to go back to the 2011 GSV capture to make sure I was looking at the right address.  Tripadvisor.com has some current photos of the property.  Not too shabby, despite the fact it's virtually unrecognizable as a Signature Inn.

sources for this post include the Peoria County, Illinois, auditor's website, signature-inns.com archived at archive.org, jamesoninns.com archived at archive.org, information found at newspapers.com, and imagery found through Google Maps and Bing Maps.  The dividing lines were also "borrowed" from Signature Inn's old site.

Photographs of other Signature Inn locations can be found here: Formerly Signature Inn by Ryan on Flickr