Franklin Hotel (Kent, Ohio)

Acorn Corner, originally known as the Franklin Hotel or Hotel Franklin, is a six-story historic building in Kent, Ohio, United States, listed on the National Register of Historic Places since January 2013. Construction started in 1919 and the hotel opened in September 1920. The hotel was also known as the Hotel Kent and later the Hotel Kent-Ellis. Locally it is often referred to as the "old Kent hotel", "Kent Hotel", or the "old hotel", and historically was nicknamed "the Grand Old Lady of Main Street". The building functioned as a hotel until the early 1970s when it was converted for use as student housing. The upper four floors were condemned in 1979, though the bottom floors housed a number of small businesses until 2000. After several years of total vacancy and nearly being demolished multiple times in the 2000s, the building was purchased in late 2011 by local developer Ron Burbick and renamed Acorn Corner to complement his adjacent Acorn Alley development. Work also began on a complete $6.5 million renovation and restoration of the building, which included construction of a new elevator shaft. The renovated building, hailed as a "Kent miracle", opened in April 2013 and had a grand opening in May. Its anchor tenant is Buffalo Wild Wings, and also includes a wine bar, offices, and apartments. The structure, designed by architect H.L. Stevens, is an example of the Neoclassi

Hotel data from Wikidata (CC0). Summary from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).