The Royal Orleans Motel and Mardi Gras Lounge opened at 2055 N Dale Mabry Hwy. in 1962 at a cost of $105,000. The U-shaped building that “brought New Orleans to Tampa” offered 52 rooms, each with its own “soft hi-fi music” (hi-fidelity music piped in with volume controls in each room). In 1965, the hotel's name was changed to the Old Orleans Motel. The business provided lodging for nearby Tampa Airport, and the Mardi Gras became a popular piano bar. Decorated with red velvet drapes and paintings of French nudes on the walls, local favorites like Pat Cole Henry entertained there for years. Lodging grew to 142 rooms, and owners added a restaurant, the Maison Rouge, to the south.

In the early 1970s, they enlarged the lounge and opened another eatery called BJ’s, where patrons could mix their own martinis. It was open until midnight for late-night snackers. Later that decade, ownership changed, and the new owners tried to bring back some of the glory days of the 1960s. They rehired a former maître d’ from New Orleans to bring back some Bourbon Street charm to the Maison Rouge. As new hotels and restaurants opened in the city and this part of the Dale Mabry strip became infamous for nude bars, the business struggled. In 1969, the 2001 Space Odyssey Lounge nude club, with its now iconic spaceship second story, opened just about one block north. In 1982, The Huddle Bar across the street from the motel was closed as a public nuisance, reportedly due to prostitution, but strip club king Joe Redner opened his Mons Venus in that building the same year.  In 1986, owners revamped the lounge as a “new exciting nightclub,” calling it a prestigious operation (no nudity) trying to separate itself from the strip club fray. It fell into hard times, and in January 1988, the entire operation was put up for public auction in foreclosure. In September of that year, security guards found a dead body in the empty building.

Two Florida investors bought the dilapidated property for $1.8 million in 1989. They spent $5.5 million remodeling it and opened a 140-room Super 8 budget motel in 1990. They seemed to embrace the seediness of the area, offering cheap hotel rooms. Blimpie’s Subs opened where the lounge was. In 1993, the hotel became Howard Johnson’s. They also struggled, filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2002, but reorganized and remained open. Also, in 1993, Longhorn Steakhouse opened in the former Maison Rouge spot, which lasted until 2013. In 2004, the Thai Terrace restaurant opened where Blimpie’s was in the front parcel of the property. In 2020, Howard Johnson closed, and the Airport Inn took its place. That same year, construction began on the new Holiday Inn Express on the rear of the property. It opened in 2023, and the remaining structures from the old motel were torn down. A Greenlane Salad drive-thru restaurant began construction in late 2023 on the out parcel of the lot along Dale Mabry.

© Chip Weiner 2024. All rights reserved