Vintage Postcard – Beltline Motel – Grand Rapids

BELTLINE MOTEL INC.
171 28th Street S.E., Grand Rapids 8, Mich.
85 Modern Units on the South Beltline
Electric Heated – Ceramic Tile Baths – Indoor Pool – Finnish Sauna.
Next to the Comet Restaurant
Close to Downtown. Telephone Area 616-241-0151
Roy and Dorothy Gackler

Pub. by Leon Foster, 221 M. Fifth St., Blanchard, Mich.
Made by Dexter Press, Inc. West Nyack, New York
94294-B

This lovely vintage postcard is unused.

Roy Gackler and Dorothy Geib did not start out in the hotel business:

Roy died in 1991 and Dorothy in 1995. They are buried at Lakeside Cemetery in Caledonia, MI.

For a little bit of recent history starting in the summer of 2012, follow this train on mlive. Reporter Matt Vande Bunte wrote “A 28th Street inn described as a hub of drug dealing and prostitution when it was shut down three years ago now might get torn down. Grand Rapids City Commission on Tuesday will be asked to contract for demolition of four buildings that make up the former Landmark Motel, 171 28th St. SE.” The motel was shut down in 2009 (mlive article here notes “the motel was responsible for more than 409 police reports between July 1, 2007, and Sept. 16, 2008 […] the 409 incidents included 33 aggravated assaults, four robberies, four sexual assaults, 21 simple assaults, 30 drug violations, 14 thefts from automobiles and 67 arrests for outstanding warrants, parole, probation and bond violations.” It appears they did add a second story on one of the buildings and the Google Street View image is now as such:

The other buildings appear to have been torn down. A little digging shows the Beltline Motel – turned Landmark Motel – turned Pleasant Motel was built in 1966 and at one point included 109 rooms in “five buildings – One building is a three story interior corridor building, one building has two stories with outside corridors, the remaining buildings are single story buildings. There is a basement that runs throughout the property including from the main building.”

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