Polar Bear Hotel Has Seen Better Days

There was a time when the Holiday Inn at the airport in Moline, Illinois was a landmark. Once an excellent hotel with a light airy atmosphere, the Holiday Inn was a busy place. In the 1970s, John Deere “conventions” and traveling families kept the place hopping. The lounge hosted entertainment on weekends, and boasted a brisk business throughout the week. The restaurant was open for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Most of the rooms looked over the outdoor pool area and the place seemed filled with light. Many travelers remembered this hotel long after visiting it only once because of the enormous polar bear that greeted visitors from the center of the lobby. I’ve met people from New York to California who remember that polar bear from some childhood vacation.

Alas, the hospitality industry, like the airline industry, has apparently grown past its golden age—at least it has at the old Quad City Airport Holiday Inn.

Now a Ramada Inn, the Holiday Inn underwent a remodeling in the late 70s or early 80s that included enclosing and rebuilding the pool. The new look was fresh, futuristic, and a huge glass dome allowed natural light to illuminate the pool, whirlpool, and rock-built waterfalls. Today, the pool and the rock walls are still there, but the pool area is dark, the dome covered some time ago with an acoustical drop ceiling, making the interior dark and cavernous.

The polar bear is still there, but has been moved out of the lobby into the gloomy pool area and he seems to be tilting forward a lot more than he once did. He sits in the center of a wishing-well pool, now dry.

The lounge and restaurant are open only for limited hours, and there is no room for live entertainment. The place looks neglected, shabby in its corners, despite a newly remodeled lobby and redecorated rooms.

I worked at this place in the 1970s and have a lot of important memories there, so its sad to see it in such shape. The vitality of the place is gone. When I was there in ’77, working in the lounge, hordes of farmers and farm implement dealers from all over the world would swarm in on weekdays around 3:30 or 4 p.m. on a one-day whirlwind tour of the John Deere headquarters. They would gulp through happy hour in 45 minutes, get on a bus to dinner at JDHQ, return to the hotel lounge around 8:30 and stay until closing time—1 AM in those days. The next day, a new group would arrive.

Today the lounge is only open a few hours on weekend evenings and business is slow. The restaurant, too, has limited hours, so room service is a thing of the past. The waterfalls don’t run unless it is a Friday or Saturday and the hotel has enough bookings. The whirlpool is tepid and wimpy, lacking decent jets. The place is like a badly aging diva, doddering into her decline.

I hope the Ramada Inn people (whom I also once worked for) realize the potential of this property. With some work, the place could once again feel like a resort and become a place people want to stay. Open the lounge and advertise to attract local patrons. Strive to make the restaurant one of quality and service. Get some skylights, at least, in the pool area and upgrade the hot tub. Think “room service.” Add an informational sign and throw some light on that old polar bear, so the next generation can make new vacation memories.

This is a one-star rant. *sigh*