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Holiday Inn YOUNGSTOWN-SOUTH (BOARDMAN)
7410 SOUTH AVE (MCKAY DR) Boardman, OH 44512 http://www.epinions.com/specs/Holiday_Inn_YOUNGSTOWN _SOUTH_BOARDMAN Review title: Youngstown's Finest Hotel for Conferences Written: Jun 29 '10 Hotel Rating: * * * * Pros: By all accounts THE hotel in metro Youngstown for large conferences. Crisply, professionally managed. Cons: At eastern end of miles of shopping malls. Too few elevators. Cramped first floor corridor. The Bottom Line: No other choice for a large conference hotel in metro Youngstown. Works well for ordinary business and tourist travelers. Needs more elevators. Plan your drive to avoid strip malls. aohcapablanca's Full Review: Holiday Inn YOUNGSTOWN-SOUTH (BOARDMAN) My wife Mary and I spent three nights (Thursday June 24 - Saturday June 26, 2010) in Room 331 of the Holiday Inn Youngstown-South in Steeltown's bustling southern suburb of Boardman, Ohio. The occasion was the 79th annual convention of The International Association of Torch Clubs (see http://www.torch.org), hosted by the Torch Club of Youngstown. Representing the Torch Club of Asheville-Blue Ridge, North Carolina, Mary and I joined 125 other delegates from the U.S. and Canada. The history and future of Youngstown, aka STEELTOWN USA, was our focus. Our convention's official topic: "From Rust Belt to Renaissance." By all accounts, the Holiday Inn of Boardman was the only hotel in metro Youngstown ever seriously considered by the convention's organizers. For, what with its 158 rooms and several large meeting areas, the Holiday Inn is simply the only hotel/motel for miles around able to host as large a group of ours and provide everything that we needed under one roof. Indeed -- as a tour guide on a bus trip around the town assured us -- the hotel was built specifically to be the regular meeting place for his company's executives on the insistence of local hero Edward J. DeBartolo, Sr. "father of the American shopping mall." And speaking of shopping malls and their cousins, our final ten miles into Boardman from the west took 30 minutes of driving through a couple of dozen traffic lights and heavy traffic between mall after mall after mall. Thank you, GPS Tom Tom! NOT! My wife and I uncovered a few negatives but thoroughly enjoyed our stay in the Youngstown-South Holiday Inn. Relating mostly to the hotel's conference facitilties, here are N E G A TI V E S:
-- We parked in front of the hotel, about 110 yards from the main lobby entrance. There was very little chance of parking any closer front, side or rear unless you had a "handicapped" sticker on your car. -- Our $99.99/dayroom was not perfect: providing neither easy chair nor couch. My wife would happily have traded the six feet of space between our comfortable queen size beds for a comfortable seat to ease her sciatica. Each bed had four gigantic pillows: two marked hard, two soft. Fortunately, as is our wont, we had brought our own pillows from home. Even the hotel's soft ones were too large and fluffy for me. -- This six-storey, 158 room hotel was completely full. Several conference late comers had, therefore, to stay nearby in a motel. Curiously, the Holiday Inn had only two elevators. Waiting for them could be long. And squeezing in among other riders often provoked comments. Nor was their motion up or down anything to rival for speed the rides at a good amusement park. Since I have begun with negatives, let me conclude this section with a couple more. -- I estimate that our walk from the first floor elevators across the lobby and down a long corridor running down the front of the hotel was about 300 yards. The first 120 or so yards were in a straight line. Then we entered a zig-zagging 180 yards or so inside what struck me as an after-thought one-storey annex containing larger conference rooms. We had to pass through two glass doors, neither easy to open. At least one of them would have been impossible, I think, for a person in a wheelchair to open unaided. I helped two wheelchair bound people get through them. Why the doors at all? Cold winters, my wife opined. -- Also: the corridor was narrow. Even in the places where it was not strewn with tables and chairs, it would have been hard for three people to walk abreast. I contrast this narrowness with the eight abreast width of mine own Asheville, NC's Radisson Renaissance Hotel, where our local torch club meets. And there are no always closed doors to fight your way through, either. -- Finally, the end-of-the corridor first floor room where we held our Torch International plenary sessions took place was never as cool as we desired. Admittedly, outside temperatures reached the high 80s each day we were there. But our sessions in that room were always a tad uncomfortable. P O S I T I V E
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Fortunately, positives of the Youngstown-South Holiday Inn outnumbered negatives by at least 9 to 1. -- Advance reservations (separately from conference arrangements, but at the conference rate) were made by our club's treasurer, my wife, without problem. And when we arrived, check-in by the two young women on duty was simple and the atmosphere was friendly. -- We manhandled our pillows, etc. up to Room 331 atop an ample push-pull cart. It barely fit into the elevator, but all went well. -- We turned right, stepping out of the elevator, crossed an eight-foot niche containing ice, washer-dryer (for guests) and other paraphernalia and were at immediately at our third-floor room. We never heard any noise from either elevator or from the niche between us. But I was awakened Sunday morning first at 2:30 a.m. and later at 3:00 by late returning chatty guests in the corridor, presumably not Torch Club members! I heard the voices of very young children in group one. Where on earth would parents have been that late with youngsters? -- Our room's two queen size beds were very comfortable, once we pushed the giant pillows off them. The not-charged-for Wi-Fi internet connectivity was close to the best I have ever had in a hotel. Fast. I was also offered eight hotel channels to choose among and usually found one with a very strong signal. -- The bathroom sported an impressionist's print of a Youngstown steel scene. Footing, including tub/shower, was firm (seniors take note). Toilet and tub were in their own notably wee room. Just outside, a single wash basin served two people, with very little space on either side to spread out contents of shaving kit, etc. -- Bathroom towels, wash cloths, etc. were ample, clean and fluffy. -- The hotel boasts of being 100% smoking free. Hurrah! Violaters would be fined $150 or $250 (I forget which) if traces of smoke lingered in the bedroom after departure. Fine with me. -- As usual in our division of labor, I was granted the three tall, deep drawers under the large flat-screen TV set. Quiet. Ample. Appreciated. -- Our room had two straight-back chairs, one a swivel and apparently meant for the work table {though the dining room chair was left in front of the work space either by a maid or the previous denizen(s)}. -- Room A/C was located in our south-facing outer wall (across a large parking area we saw the historic movie theater featured in the hotel's own publicity). Our cooler looked new, simple to understand, quiet and did a fine job of holding us at 70 degrees Fahrenheit. -- One Torch Club attendee from Maine was there with his wife. We had known them for years. When preparing for bed Thursday evening they had discovered that their room's king-size mattress was out of its box spring. Not wanting to bother the help, they chose not to ask the hotel to make an adjustment that evening. He slept level; she was on a sideways slant towards the floor! But first thing Friday morning they phoned for help and had it within minutes and were full of praise to us for the hotel's hop-to-itivity. -- Breakfasts were not included in our conference fees. They were served daily from 6:30 a.m. off the first floor lobby. I am not an enthusiast for hotel fare. But service was beyond good. The menu was ample and prices (for a hotel) surprisingly low. You could eat well from $3.95 to $8.00 if you chose to. The downside: universally condemned coffee -- far too weak. One commiserating waitress said that she always brought to work her own coffee from Dunkin' Donuts. -- The hotel prepared box lunch sandwiches for our bus outings on Friday and Saturday afternoons: choices of tuna, ham or roast beef, with chips, apple and bottled water or pop. We ate ours in our room before boarding the buses. Tasty. -- Two of our evening meals were provided in the hotel, in a large dining room 30 yards closer to the elevators than our meeting room. Service was perfect. Waiters abounded. Entrees were generally praised. And the A/C did its job. I have seen and heard more state-of-the-art sound systems. But ours was passable. The hotel's food and service contrasted favorably with the evening meal in the Overture Restaurant attached to the DeYor Performing Arts Center in uptown Youngstown. That Arts Center, home of and owned for some years now by the Youngstown Symphony, was opened in 1931 as an Art Deco/Egyptian/you-name-it melange Warner Brothers movie theater. It seats today 2,303 music lovers in comfort and a certain offbeat elegance. I mention this because young Jack Warner grew up in Youngstown, before rising to the top of Warner Brothers. I have to think that he chose Youngstown for this exotic palace in thanks for early memories. In any event, we dined in the Overture Restaurant Friday night. Over dessert and later we heard three local artists playing harps, singing and reciting poetry. This was possibly the most disorganized, slowest service I have ever had at any conference. I mention it merely to underline how well-staffed, professional and good were by contrast the dining staff of the Youngstown-South Holiday Inn. Bottom Line: The Youngstown-Boardman (Boardman is a newer separate township) Holiday Inn worked well for us. As a conference site it apparently has no effective local competition. We enjoyed our stay. I recommend the Holiday Inn more warmly to travelers who are not attending a conference, but it wasn't at all bad for our Torch Clubs Conference, either. -OOO- Recommended: Yes. =-=-=-=-=-=- |