SALEM — The soon-to-open Hampton Inn at the end of Washington Street is a unique building downtown. Three wings differentiate a two-to-one ratio of hotel rooms to apartments, and a three-story garage in the middle of it all has ground-level entrances on each level.
Then there are four retail and restaurant spaces facing one part of Washington Street, but there’s no current plan for tenants given the ongoing pandemic.
Sean Riley, president and CEO of Maine Course Hospitality Group, stood inside a two-bedroom apartment on Wednesday afternoon. The front door in the unit technically was on the third floor of the building, but still just a handful of stone steps directly onto Washington Street as it heads up toward Lafayette. Apartments further down the street have even fewer steps. But around the corner on the other side of Washington Street — across the street from Riley Plaza — the hotel portion of the building begins on the ground floor.