The Thunderbird Motor Hotel was once a showplace with a dinner theater that drew the likes of Howard Keel and Van Johnson.
Fats Domino performed there. Walter Cronkite spoke there.
It was the site of business conferences, school reunions, clown conventions and football festivities.
Opened in 1959, Arlington was a growing residential and commercial suburb for downtown executives at the time.
Wednesday night, the old hotel was destroyed in a massive fire. The cause was not immediately known.
Back in the day, the Thunderbird’s Kings Inn restaurant offered fine dining. Its lounge boasted a 78-foot-long and 22-foot-wide chandelier with a twisting surface consisting of thousands of tiny mirrors. It even had poolside tiki bars.
The back of an old post card listed at one time on Amazon read in part: “300 Luxurious rooms, Gourmet Dining Room, 2 Lounges with Live Entertainment, Complete Convention Facilities, Only minutes from Downtown and the Gator Bowl. Location is close to everything and offers the ultimate in service.”
In recent years, the property, surrounded by a chain-link fence and “No Trespassing” signs, had boarded-up windows, graffiti-marked buildings and patchy weeds.
Its 11 or so buildings on 18.5 acres had been plagued by vandals and burglars who have “raided” the plumbing, electrical, heating and air-conditioning systems, a real estate broker said in a 2015 Times-Union story.
The hotel’s problems stemmed from several management changes and a downturn in the hotel business. It went through a couple of owners and several years of litigation before being sold in 1985 at a foreclosure auction, according to Times-Union archives.
In 1986, it became a Ramada Inn Conference Center. Business declined in the 1990s when growth shifted from Arlington to Southside, and the Ramada closed in 2002.
Bethelite Inc., affiliated with Bethel Baptist Institutional Church, bought the 277-room center in 2003 for $2.65 million. There were plans to provide a wholesome venue for conventions, retreats, proms, weddings and family reunions. It would not, however, operate as a hotel.
In 2006, Bethelite sold the property to the church for $5.1 million. Though it did operate as a conference center for several years, it was closed for some time before Bethel sold it to a Miami-based South American development company for $1.25 million in 2014.
Less than a month later, that company sold the facility to Arlington Expressway Corporate Buildings LLC for almost $1.3 million.
Then in May 2017, the property sold for $2.3 million to Otello LLC with a North Miami address, according to Duval County court and property appraiser records. And a month later, it sold to 770 Inn and Suites LLC in Aventura for $3 million, records show.
The new owner at that time told the Jacksonville Daily Record that the group wanted to redevelop the property into a hotel, restaurant and more.
Editor’s note: Much of this story was previously published in the Times-Union.