Ariel view of Palace Arms Hotel taken from Google Earth.
The Bismarck Holiday Inn was a nationally renowned hotel, and one of the most successful hotels to bare the Holiday Inn name prior to its continuing decline and eventual closure. At the time it closed, the hotel was known as the Palace Arms Hotel.
The Holiday Inn was located off Memorial Highway in western Bismarck, near the Liberty Memorial Bridge. With 108 rooms, the hotel was the largest in the city when it opened in 1962 at a cost of $1.3 million. The hotel also had a small cocktail lounge and restaurant, and was the first hotel in Bismarck to feature an indoor swimming pool.
The hotel was nationally recognized, and one of the most successful hotels ever to bare the Holiday Inn name. Dan Mayer, the sales director during the hotel’s golden years, was once recognized at the chain’s corporate headquarters for the success seen at the hotel.
Several additions would follow, the biggest being a six-story tower added in 1972, giving the hotel a total of 261 rooms, more than doubling the room count.
Even with the hotel’s reputation and recent addition, the hotel would eventually succumb to various factors that would lead to the hotel’s closure and subsequent demolition. The construction of the Grant Marsh Bridge was the first major contributor to the hotel’s eventual closure. Prior to the completion of I-94, drivers had to cross the Missouri River via the Liberty Memorial Bridge, located next to the Holiday Inn.
Despite the shifted traffic, the hotel thrived for many years. Competition would eventually bring the hotel’s reign to an end, however, beginning with the opening of the Town House Hotel (now Kelly Inn) in 1970 near the newly completed Interstate 94 and the Kirkwood Motor Inn in 1974 across from Kirkwood Mall. Not only was the Kirkwood Motor Inn located on prime real estate across from the newly constructed shopping center, it also had a larger convention room than did the Holiday Inn.
By the late 1980s, the poorly located and increasingly outdated hotel was no longer able to compete. The hotel would soon become Hotel Bismarck & Convention Center, and later the Palace Arms Hotel. The pool area was filled in and closed, along with the lounge and restaurant.
The hotel quickly went from an award-winning hotel to a local hangout for criminals. In 2001 alone there were nearly 200 police calls to the Palace Arms Hotel.
When the hotel closed in December 2001, most of the building had already been closed off. Less than a dozen rooms were rented, all weekly renters. Garbage and other debris filled the badly lit building, and vandals had repeatedly struck the building inside and out. The building was demolished in 2006 to make way for the new Bank of North Dakota building.
The Holiday Inn was not the only business in the area to suffer following the opening of the Grant Marsh Bridge, and later the Expressway Bridge. A gas station and A&W Restaurant also closed long ago.
The Holiday Inn brand did not leave Bismarck upon vacating the west Bismarck hotel. The Sheraton Inn was re-branded a Holiday Inn for years before once again re-branding to Radisson Inn, as it remains today. A Holiday Inn Express was built in 2004 in North Bismarck and is all that currently serves the Bismarck area with the Holiday Inn name.
