Moscow’s Royal Motor Inn is spiffed up and rechristened

The Royal Motor Inn street sign has finally been retired in downtown Moscow, two years after the new owners rechristened the mid-century, downtown property the Monarch Motel.

The new Monarch Motel sign went up the last week of October, funded by a $5,000 Kickstarter campaign.

Brett and Nikki Woodland, owners of the Nectar and Bloom restaurants in Moscow, bought the Royal Motor Inn in November 2015 and immediately started renovations, one room at a time, on the 38-room motel built in the late 1950s. Over the decades, the hotel had gained an unsavory reputation for offering weekly and monthly rentals that drew drug use and transient guests, Nikki Woodland said.

The motel has been fixed up in stages.

“We finished the 18^th room Nov. 3,” said Nikki Woodland, explaining they didn’t want to put up a Monarch sign until they had half the motel remodeled. “We don’t have a lot of money.”

Once the remodel is complete, the Monarch will have 33 rooms. Remodeling the other rooms could go as fast as about seven months, if the Woodlands land an investor, or once again take two years.

“We are looking for investors so we can do the second half much faster,” she said.

The Woodlands stripped the Royal Motor Inn down to the shell and gave the Monarch a “minimalist Danish mid-century modern look.” New wood flooring graces the downstairs rooms with carpeting upstairs to minimize noise, Woodland said.

Nikki Woodland estimates the full remodel will cost about $500,000.

The complete renovation at the Monarch can serve as a “new” motel for Moscow. There are 35 hotels newly opened, under construction or in planning around Idaho, but until the Monarch began renovations, Moscow wasn’t part of the hotel renaissance. Sandpoint, Mountain Home and McCall are also larger population or tourism centers without hotel construction or renovation.