Can the Hayes Hotel Again Be the Highlight of Downtown Jackson?

Can the Hayes Hotel be brought back to its original glory?

Thehayesjackson.com raves about the hotel's “marble finishes, gold-adorned grand foyer and staircase, terrazzo floors, and elegant interiors (which) made the hotel a high-class and architecturally notable establishment.”

And it was, too.

The hotel was named after Clarence Hayes, who established the Hayes Wheel Company (later Kelsey-Hayes) in 1908, manufacturing wooden wheels for the Ford Model T.

Hayes Hotel opened for business in 1926, with 200 rooms that covered ten floors. The hotel became a place where the important people stayed: luminaries, celebrities, just plain rich people.....oh yeah, and regular folks like us. It was the pearl of downtown Jackson that lasted just one year short of fifty.

Consumers bought the building in 1973, and just two years later, the hotel stopped taking reservations and finally closed. I don't know how long Consumers was in there, but I visited and toured the building after they moved out.....it was a mess. The gorgeous Hayes ballroom was split in half with a drop ceiling and rooms & hallways were ripped, shredded, and peeling.

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The old Hayes was empty by 2003. I remember seeing the old red “on-air” sign on the wall, leftover from the early days of WILX-TV Channel 10 News (It was on the afternoon of March 15, 1959, WILX-TV made its debut in the former Hayes coffee shop).

The Hayes Hotel building was sold to the Ohio-based CollierGibson (for $25,000), who planned to renovate it into 109 apartments, with commercial and office rentals.

Scroll down a ways to see a gallery of photos that include memorabilia and a look inside.