Jennifer N.
Yelp
(2.5 stars) If I had to tell you one thing about the Downtown Home Inn, it's that it isn't an inn, at least not in the American sense of the term. It feels more like a dorm, or like staying in an Aunt's basement.
We stayed in the basement apartment suite. From what we could tell online, it was the only space with a private bathroom. The suite itself was very comfortable - a living room with a sofa and chair, a small desk, a pass-through kitchen on the way to the bedroom. It's all furnished with IKEA, so it has that cheerful Scandinavian feel. There are basic amenities in the suite including a fridge and small stove, silverware and plates, and so on.
There are, however, three things to keep in mind about this basement space:
First, it's freezing. The first night we were wearing jackets inside, and it was literally 80 degrees outside. It got better as the days went on, but it was still cold.
Second, you can hear people moving around upstairs especially at breakfast time, so if you're a light sleeper, pass on this.
Third, you need to be comfortable with a narrow flight of stairs to get down to the basement, and with a few random steps in the apartment.
But we could have dealt with all of this (except, perhaps the cold) if the inn felt better. My main complaint about this place is that it felt like no one was running the show at Downtown Home. The best word to describe it, I think, is unmanned. Aside from a very sweet but slightly clueless guy staffing the inn (more on him later), I'm not really sure if we encountered anyone else who works at the Inn. One day there was an older woman outside watering plants. We never saw her again. One night at around 11pm, we came home, and there was a tall guy standing behind the counter. We had never seen him before. He might work at the inn, but he didn't say anything to greet us or indicate as much, so we just kept walking. That felt strange and gave it a hostel or dorm vibe.
Aside from the unmanned feature of the inn, it also felt messy. When we arrived, the communal area was a disaster - boxes of open cereal everywhere, dirty towels and bathmats on the floor, dirty dishes piled up, and so on. I actually felt panicked when I saw just how funky the place was. It looked better by that afternoon, but it wasn't a good first impression. The guy who was staffing the inn while we were there gave the impression of sweet cluelessness - most of the time when we were coming and going, he seemed to be either watching movies or playing on the computer with a man who seemed to be his friend (the only exception was when we saw him getting into an argument with the business owner next door). He also constantly seemed to have bathroom floor mats drying in the banister between the kitchen and the basement which didn't add to the aesthetics of the place.
There also seemed to be no systems around room maintenance - when we arrived our room had no towels. When I asked for some the sweet clueless man told me he was still "making them." Fair enough. Two days later, we asked for some fresh towels, and if we could throw away our garbage since our small garbage can was overflowing. It seemed to us if we hadn't asked for some towels and to empty our trash can, no one would have checked in on us. On our last day, it seemed someone had come into our room to replace towels and to empty the trash. I'm not sure what their systems are around cleaning, but my hunch is there is no system.
As for breakfast, at an American inn, someone would an effort (e.g. take the cereal out of boxes and put it in some glass containers, put the bread in a basket so it doesn't look like you just made a Costco run). It doesn't have to be fancy or home cooked, but at least it would look like someone cared. Here, about ten bottles of Smuckers seem to always be on the table, and there are open boxes of cereal, bags of store-bought bread, and lots of varieties of milk. It's low budget and, from what I could tell, low effort, and they don't make it seem otherwise.
Finally, I hate to be a complainer, but the keypad on the front door felt oddly unsafe to me - who knows how many guests have had that code, and if the inn ever bothers to change it. It seems much safer to have a finite number of front door keys that you can keep track of. I found myself wondering if this is the system they have evolved because it allows the place to stay essentially unstaffed (they send you an email when you make the reservation with the front door code, and telling you the key to your room will be in the door in case no one is here to greet you. You could cancel your reservation and still have a code to the building).
While the location is really great, and the basement suite is fine for the price, I don't think I would stay here again. The setup was just too strange.
