CLEVELAND -- The Drury Plaza Hotel is officially opened for business.
With exactly 80 days before the Republican National Convention comes to town the changes to downtown Cleveland continue.
Built in 1930, the hotel is located inside the former Cleveland Board of Education building and welcomed its first guest Friday.
"We were sitting at home watching the news and we saw the announcement that the Drury was opening in the old Board of Education building so we thought it would be fun to come down and check it out if we can get a room and we found out we were the first customers," said Donn and Debbie West.
The Drury will have its official grand opening in June, but Friday was the soft launch.
"They wanted to work out all the imperfections," said Drury development project manager Krisandra Lippert. "That's plenty of time to do that and have a smooth transition to the RNC."
They'll have two and a half months to work out those kinks, but once the RNC comes, they'll be packed. They're just happy they finished the three year project in time.
"We all would've been updating our resume if it hadn't been open in time, and that's true, absolutely," said Lippert. "This was booked the minute we got it, we were booked solid for the RNC."
It took three years to make $52 million worth of renovations, transforming the building into the 189-room and 16 suite hotel.
"All of the original layout of the building, none of it has been changed," said General manager Scott Schmelzer. "It would've been a lot less expensive to come in and take out all the old architecture and just put in new stuff. But we opted to go a different route because we thought it's such an important part of a city that is admittedly on the rise. We felt we wanted to return it to its historical character, culture and bring it back."
And the guests say they love the renovations at the hotel and throughout downtown.
"We've seen Cleveland from being a place that we came downtown back in the 50's to shop with all the beautiful department stores and then we lived through all the decline and it's just awesome to see things picking up," said Donn and Debbie West.
The Drury is just one of several hotels opening in just time for thousands of visitors during the Republican National Convention.
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