Mount Laurel wants to buy two distressed hotel properties to develop into affordable housing.

Shortly after the 90-room hotel opened in 1976 on Route 73 in Mount Laurel it reported a booming business.

While competitors typically were only 35% occupied, the McIntosh Inn's manager boasted turning away travelers every night. No plush lobby, no swimming pool or restaurant but a cut-rate price of $13.50 a night ($78 in 2026 dollars) was attracting lodgers.

"We have a clean room at a good price," the manager said in a Courier-Post article. "This is what customers are looking for."

After changing owners twice in the 2000s, what is now the Rodeway Inn on about 2.4 acres at 1132 Route 73 southbound is struggling and the target of a Township plan to name it a condemnation redevelopment area, purchase it and redevelop the property for affordable housing. The property, cited by public agencies for dozens of code violations, now is listed for sale at $6.2 million, according to a Township study.

Like many other New Jersey municipalities, Mount Laurel has searched for properties that could be developed into affordable housing to satisfy the town's obligations under the latest round of court-mandated housing commitments. 

A key strategy of the town's 10-year residential development projections, filed last year and updated this year, is to redevelop aging and sometimes distressed hotel properties into affordable housing. Nine hotels are listed in the 2025 Township plan for redevelopment and if all were turned into affordable housing it would yield 826 affordable housing apartments, according to the plan's estimates.

The Township Planning Board next Thursday is scheduled to review the condemnation plan for the Rodeway Inn and one for the 108-room Red Roof Inn on three acres at 603 Fellowship Road that opened in the early 1980s. The town's affordable housing plan says Rodeway would accommodate 86 affordable units and Red Roof 90 affordable units.

"If the Planning Board accepts the studies' findings, then the Township will begin to negotiate with the property owners to acquire the lands," Township Solicitor George M. Morris of the Parker McCay law firm told 70and73.com in an email. "If acquired, a redeveloper will be selected to develop housing at these locations."

Morris said the two studies are the first in a series expected over the next few years. "The law requires that the Township identify whether the redevelopment study will grant the Township all powers to negotiate, including the power of eminent domain," he said.

The July preliminary investigation reports on the two properties by Harbor Consultants of Cranford, New Jersey — each is more than 600 pages — show two hotels that Harbor says are greatly in need of repair and the target of dozens of police, fire, town code and housing violations. Each report goes into deep detail to establish that each property needs to be designated a condemnation redevelopment area.

For example, a Fire Department directive issued last year forbids any fire department personnel from entering the Red Roof Inn without having a police officer on the scene, according to the Red Roof study.

From 2021 through April this year there were a total of 258 arrests and 440 police service cases at the Red Roof Inn, the study states. In 2025, police made 64 arrests at the property, the highest total in five years, the report states.

In the same period at the Rodeway Inn there were 136 arrests and 227 police service cases, the Rodeway Inn report states. Arrests totaled 29 in 2025, the highest total in five years, according to the report.

"The sheer quantity of incidents and violations reported by the Township Fire Department and Township Police Department illustrate the unsafe state of the building in the Redevelopment Study Area which contribute to unwholesome living and working conditions," the consultant wrote in recommending the Planning Board and Township Council declare the Rodeway Inn property to be a condemnation area.

The same recommendation is made by the consultant in the Red Roof Inn study.

Each report has photographs of unrepaired damage and decay in both the interior and exterior of the hotels.

The McIntosh Inn was renamed the Rodeway Inn in 2005 after the property was sold by Middleton Tobacco Co. of King of Prussia, Pennsylvania to Mount Laurel Hospitality LLC for $3,710,000, according to the report. 

In 2021, the hotel property was sold once again, to RMD Hospitality Inc. for $5,375,000 and the Rodeway name was retained.

The Red Roof Inn is owned by 603 Fellowship LLC, according to its report.