The Cecil Hotel featured on Netflix's chilling docuseries may reopen its doors this year.
Netflix’s Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel has become an overnight hit. According to reports, the infamous hotel is set to reopen later this year.
The docuseries is based on the disappearance of Canadian student Elisa Lam. It delves into the sordid details of how the 21-year-old was found dead in a water tank on the hotel's roof weeks after her disappearance. Without giving any spoilers away, Lam’s death isn’t the only sordid thing about the hotel.
Dubbed “hotel death”, the establishment has had its fair share of death and grim since its inception in 1924.
According to a CNN interview with Hollywood guide Richard Schave, "It's the place where serial killers stay."
Serial killers, including Richard Ramirez and Jack Unterweger, checked into the hotel over the years.
According to a hotel clerk, Ramirez aka "The Nightstalker", stayed at the hotel for a few weeks.
Unterweger stayed at the Cecil in 1991, where he strangled and killed at least three sex workers. Despite its grimy past, Cecil Hotel, later renamed "Stay on Main", is getting a rebrand sometime this year,
According to Real Estate Weekly, the redevelopment will boast 299 hotel rooms and 264 affordable units.
The affordable hotel has been closed for years, but the rebrand may lure many travellers, especially now that the docuseries has come out.
With “True-crime tourism” becoming a trend of late, many guides in the area may capitalise on this when it reopens.
However, Matthew Baron, president of New York-based Simon Baron Development, told Forbes: “We put everything on hold last year back in March, so everything's on hold. So there's no definitive plan. And there’s no definitive timeline.
“We don't have any comment on the plan or anything that's happening with the property, and there’s no renovation. Right now, there's nothing on the horizon," he said (sic).
Forbes revealed that the firm bought the Cecil Hotel in 2014 for $30 million and earmarked it for a capital improvement project.