This page was developed out of two featurettes that I was working on (but ultimately scrapped and incorporated into other pages), one called "The Former Days Inns of Houston" and the other "Defunct Southwest Freeway Motels".

In any case, this motel first opened around January 1965 as a Holiday Inn, informally "Holiday Inn Central" to distinguish it from other Houston-area Holiday Inn locations and featured 280 rooms. Unusually, the main entrance to the parking lot goes under the motel, with additional parking located on the ground level at Blodgett & Garrott (though there is no parking lot access from Garrott Street).

In 1987, due to a downturn in the economy that wiped out about a dozen hotels, the hotel closed its doors. In late 1994, the dormant hotel reopened as a Days Inn (Days Inn Downtown/Medical Center). Also, at some point, Days Inn reconfigured the pool. The original was more of a shamrock shape, but Days Inn later expanded it into more of a teardrop shape. In 2003, the hotel (which had never seen much success as a Days Inn) was purchased by the non-profit group U.S. VETS to be converted into a housing facility for low-income & homeless veterans (and to a lesser degree, people with HIV/AIDS). Despite neighborhood resistance, the facility reopened as "Midtown Terrace Suites" in late 2004. The pool was intact until sometime around 2011-2012.

I can see why the hotel may have had trouble over the years. Here you're practically next to zooming cars, in some cases just about 50 feet away from the highway. On top of that was a large steel structure that either was used for the hotel's signage and until around 2011-2012, read "ZARA'S RESTAURANT". I can't tell if that dates back to the Holiday Inn days or was a different establishment (Days Inn did not have an on-site restaurant). At night, it felt very dystopian/cyberpunk (in an interesting aesthetic kind of way).

In 2024, the property changed hands to Cloudbreak Communities, which, as one Yelp review states, changed the rules to just become affordable housing rather than focusing on veterans and people with HIV/AIDS. In 2026, demolition began on the east side of the building, suggesting a reconstruction; however, I can't find much on it.

It also appears that the hotel was built at the same time as 4600 Main, an office building with retail, but was otherwise unaffected. (See the page on Main Street.)

One more story related to this Holiday Inn...nearby, there's a closed-off entrance ramp. This was closed in the early 2000s and after a brief period of reopening closed permanently. Part of the problem was the short sight lines and short merging lane before the lane ended for the merging lanes coming in from Spur 527. During the 2000s and 2010s, there was a locked gate that was sparsely used (sometimes for special events) but around 2020 the road was repainted to reflect the closure and concrete barriers blocked it off.