The Franklin Hotel, LLC — Hotel in Strawberry Point

Sticking to the facts. Live in hotels 24/7, travel 49 weeks per year. Franklin was nearby for a job, but will stay further away next time. One of the worst hotels we've visited. Parking is on-street or small lot behind hotel - not enough spots for number of rooms available, PLUS bar guests, PLUS diner guests. Two "queens" bedroom $66 total for one night. Thought that was cheap, but for the quality - should have been $45. Beds were clearly doubles, not queen & actually 2 rooms with an adjoining door (only 1 bathroom in the larger room). Rooms are upstairs - no elevator, no handicap access. Floors & stairs squeak SO LOUD. Rooms smelled of fried food all night. Paper thin walls - could hear talking from other rooms. First floor bar was loud until about 11:30pm - we had to be up at 3:30am for work.

Bathroom door has no latch, have to use a small slide-lock, otherwise door hangs open. Stand-alone sink in both rooms (one out of order) no counter tops. Shower - absolutely lowest water pressure we've experienced (again, we LIVE in hotels, this was the WORST water pressure so far), & solid 2-3 min wait for hot water to kick on.

No phone in room, never saw a single hotel staff after check in, so no way to get help/assistance if needed. No fridge or microwave in room. Not even a microwave for guest use in lobby or restaurant; forcing guests to order from diner. TV was a 20in fat-backed relic, no TV in smaller room. Curtains in main room were half falling off the rod, in smaller room my curtain was sheer & offered NO privacy. Had to hang towels on the rod just to change clothes & sleep with privacy from occupied windows directly across from us. Curtain rod was so weak, was afraid the weight of 2 thin towels would break it. Black hairs on pillows and thicker blankets, but sheets seemed clean. AC unit (only one window unit in larger room) was ancient and didn't work. Radiator heater in each room - no temp control, it got HOT, had to open windows (one fan in smaller room). Only windows in main room locked, for smaller room we fashioned a barricade on window to sleep safely.

Wall 'art' crooked, wallpaper peeling and ballooned away from wall. Many lightbulbs burnt out in hallways. Drop-down ceiling made room cramped - had wasps (in Nov?) flying inside florescent light fixture.

Restaurant-- Food looks cheap until you see that they charge extra for lettuce, tomato, onion, or cheese for any burger, melt, or sandwich that doesn't already come with those items listed in description. All sides were also extra (no fries included with burger/sandwich) Portions were small. Our order: Cheese sticks app (5 with marinara), steak sandwich (small and just ok) with potato salad (heavy onion but good) and hashbrowns, ham & cheese melt (tasty! but small) with fries and same potato salad, chocolate milk (white milk with maybe a 1/2 teaspoon of chocolate syrup), vanilla chai tea (probably a latte, not a tea. It was delicious though!) -...

Let me preface this review by saying that normally eating here is great. The food is always good and the prices are unbeatable. I live nearly an hour away but anytime we're near here we stop. On this visit, however, things were not that way. I took my family here for a Sunday lunch as they had been camping at Backbone. When we arrived there was one other table waiting for food. Our waitress was very kind and did tell us that she suffers from short term memory loss but we did have to remind her several times of the things we needed. She was not my issue, however. When we sat down and ordered drinks we also asked for the garden basket appetizer. Once we had our drinks, we ordered our food while we waited for our starter. Just after we placed our order a large group of close to 20 sat down. Nearly 30 minutes after ordering our basket we noticed food was being taken to the large group while we still had nothing- except a 3yr old getting real hungry. We asked our waitress about the basket, thinking she had forgotten it and she said she had put it in when we asked. Shortly after that we started to get parts of our order. The waitress told us that the cook, who I believe is also the owner, had decided the order he wanted to make things and that's why we weren't getting our appetizer first or our full meal together. When I told her to tell him to forget about the basket he proceeded to stand in the kitchen and glare at us- and then low and behold our basket arrived. I had ordered a French dip sandwich and when I finally got that I was disappointed to see that I literally had 1 piece of thin cut roast beef on a very thick bun. And since it had been made glaringly clear that we were of no priority it did no good to send it back or we never would have gotten it back. It finally got to the point where our waitress was scared to come to our table because she knew we were being treated horribly by the cook. (And we were very nice to her and recognized that this was completely out of her control.). Honestly, the fact that a table of 20, which had arrived over 15+ minutes later than us, got served before us makes me question returning. I enjoy supporting this establishment because of the history, but there is no excuse for the treatment we received from the owner. And if he didn't care enough to keep me happy why should I come back?! In the end, it took almost an hour to get our full order, it was 15 minutes from when the first part was placed down to when we got the last item, the cook glared at us most of our meal, and nothing was done to our check to try to make it better. Sadly, that's probably going to be my last visit to...

A group of us went here to stay overnight as part of an event to do some investigating on the haunted claims, and upon arrival, we are given the key for Room #7 that we had reserved since January. Another group of all women (very self-entitled) showed up and talked the owner into a giving them our Room #7 key. Then our entire group was going to move to Room #22 but those same Karens were given our #22 key also! The hotel owner then separates us into Room 5 and Room 9 in the other hall. Those women were booze fed, obnoxiously loud (I could hear them in the next hall even), they had no respect for people in the other hotel rooms, they were disrespectful when coming into an area we were investigating even though we tried to be as quest as possible when we approached their investigation areas. They hogged all the investigation areas of the hotel almost all night. The owners were mostly non-existant during all of this after our rooms were given to these women (I use this term loosely). As for these women... If you plan to have a paranormal investigation group, then learn how to be respectful of others! Refresh yourselves on what the word "share" means! After this trip to the hotel, I have no desire to go back there again. Regarding this group of women, we'll just pass on the word about their behavior and will NEVER allow them to investigate with our group. The owners of this hotel were a major disappointment and the drunk investigation team of women were...