LEWISTON — City officials allowed the owners of the Ramada Inn and Conference Center at 490 Pleasant St. to partially reopen under new management.

The troubled hotel, which opened as Maine’s first Ramada Inn Feb. 22, 1974, was condemned and shuttered by the city twice in one year — in April of 2024 and again in January of this year. A frozen water pipe feeding the hotel’s fire suppression system burst and flooded the conference center, leading the city to take action in January.

The 2024 condemnation was prompted by numerous maintenance issues, the most serious of which was a failing fire alarm system.

Lewiston’s director of planning and code enforcement, Jon Connor, told the Sun Journal in an email that the city reinspected the property on Monday, and that the hotel now has 53 rooms licensed for rent in wings A&B.

Connor explained that the hotel’s owner, Emerald Hospitality, applied for a lodging house A1 license in July of this year. An inspection July 22 determined that “the violations that caused the condemnation had been corrected.” The city issued a conditional license on Aug. 12 for 39 rooms in one section of the hotel.

One of the conditions of the license required the hotel to prevent the public from accessing the other parts of the hotel that were not ready for licensure.

Connor adds that Emerald Hospitality is in the process of submitting an application to open more rooms at the back of the building, designated as wing C.

Connor said Emerald Hospitality has brought in a new management team to oversee day-to-day operations and told him they fully intend to renovate the hotel in the next year to bring the conference center back online, establish a food and beverage license as soon as possible and bring the entire hotel property back to its “glory days.”

In August 2023, the Ramada Inn  housed asylum seekers for the city of Portland, with the last family moving out in December of that year. Lewiston Housing previously considered buying the hotel for transitional housing but those plans fizzled out in 2023.

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