The latest iteration of one of Concord’s most visible hotels has reopened for business.
The Doubletree hotel at the intersection of N. Main St. and Loudon Road quietly opened after a 10-month renovation that changed it from a Holiday Inn. All 122 rooms are available to guests, as is the restaurant, although the indoor pool is not yet ready to be used.
A formal ribbon-cutting is set for Friday, but business is already brisk, said Eric Hall, the front manager, with clients a mix of newcomers and those who know the building from its past life. “People come in and say, I remember having a meeting here,” Hall commented.
A hotel has sat on this site since 1975, when a 100-unit Ramada Inn opened after two previous attempts to build hotels or motels fell through, according to “Crosscurrents of Change,” a history of Concord. The building later switched to a Holiday Inn.
Developer Steve Duprey purchased it in August 2025 for $16.8 million from the Tsunis family, which owned it since 1985. The Holiday Inn closed in December and renovations have been ongoing at the downtown landmark since.
Work was complicated by the fact that the building was 50 years old, Duprey said.
“It was certainly at the end of its life as a functioning hotel. But as is always the case when you start work, you always find things you couldn’t find during pre-purchase due diligence,” he said.
Case in point: 1970s-era cast-iron pipes in the plumbing had begun to flake.
“We were in the kitchen and decided to double-check. Every single subfloor line in the kitchen was bad. We had to dig up the entire kitchen floor and replace them,” he said.
The transition is so recent that clicking on the hotel’s link for customer reviews brings up several TripAdvisor complaints about the Holiday Inn’s condition in its waning days.
The restaurant and bar is called Haley and Bear and is the first under this brand being rolled out by Hilton, which owns Doubletree. Its menu and decor “celebrates the spirit of American hospitality,” in the words of its website.
Duprey said his team wanted to avoid having a “typical hotel restaurant” and negotiated with Hilton for something more unique.
“We had a lot more input than just being handed a cookie-cutter restaurant,” he said.
