A Night at the Whiting

May 3, 2006

It’s quiet at the Whiting Hotel at midnight. Although many city residents get the creeps just walking past this controversial hotel in downtown Traverse City, I haven’t heard any weird noises, bumps, growls or screams from my fellow guests. In room #64 all that’s heard is the gentle rustle of another page turning in the large book I’ve brought along for company.
It’s as quiet as a nunnery as I drift off to sleep on the threadbare sheets in my humble room.
The Whiting Hotel has been the focus of a storm of letters in the Express in recent weeks -- letters that seem likely to continue for some time. Claims have been made that the Whiting is a nest of dangerous, unwelcome, homeless people, halfway-house prisoners and sex offenders.
But what’s it really like? I wonder as I decide to spend the night on a whim.
My wife is apprehensive about me staying here and my 19-year-old daughter warns me that friends of her friends claim that people with emotional disturbances are said to live here. There’s even a rumor of prostitutes (although I imagine they must be beyond skanky if there really are any).
But as I suspect after walking up the 28 steps to the front desk to check in, it’s mostly people who seem down on their luck at the Whiting -- there’s nothing much scary about them. In fact, some of these residents are probably the same people you find sitting next to you at a lunch counter downtown or standing in the checkout line at Meijer’s.
Who are these people? And what’s it like spending the night at a place that gives many area residents the shivers?
A burly man with a shaved head and some impressive tattoos is mopping the floor at the top of the stairs. He seems friendly enough, and tells me I have to be buzzed in through a locked door to gain admittance. At the desk, a young woman named Selen asks if I’d like a simple room with just a sink for $28 and a shared bathroom down the hall, or a room with a full bath for $31. I decide to splurge on the full bath. For $140, you can stay the whole week -- a rate that drops to even less if you pay by the month.
I’m expecting some tough old guy at the desk with a baseball bat behind the counter like you might find in a slum hotel in a movie. Selen, by contrast, is firm but friendly; a receptionist who seems no different than any I’ve met in any other hotel. She shows me a choice of rooms and the kitchen where many residents make their meals. The kitchen seems a bit sad to me -- a last resort for cheerless meals.
I get a pageful of rules -- 24 in all -- no smoking, gambling, rough-housing or loud conversation... no alcohol or drugs of any kind... must wear shirt and shoes in public areas... no eating food on the couches in the lobby... no visitors after 10 p.m., etc. There are a lot of rules at the Whiting.
There’s a harried looking woman who looks old before her time in the TV room, and I imagine she’s homeless and weighed down by troubles. There are two bored looking teenage boys who I imagine are her sons. I don’t ask because it doesn’t seem appropriate for hotel small talk.
Other guests walking the halls include a number of energetic young men whom I imagine are prisoners who’ve been released to the Whiting’s halfway house program. They seem friendly enough -- certainly not dangerous -- and I reflect that I could have been one of them myself back at the age of 19 or so.
I’m lucky: I get to see the Whiting while it’s still a decorator’s nightmare -- or fix-up dream as the case may be. Volunteer crews have been painting the place and I’ve arrived a day before the new carpeting is laid. The lobby’s floor and second floor hallway are a perfect scuffed-up wreck; it’s a shock to see them a day later with new carpeting and paint, looking as nice as any genteel hotel you might find in a big city.
My room isn’t much -- a dim bulb, a framed picture, a ceiling fan and some scuffed-up old furniture. But it’s got a window looking out the back of the building and is next to the fire escape. I’ve stayed in a lot worse south of the border, and once spent more than $120 per day for a similar room in London. Unfortunately, there’s no HBO, so I’ll miss “The Soprano’s” tonight. Thank God “24” is on, even though the cable connection is so bad you can hardly see through the blizzard of static on the screen.
That’s about as rough as it got for me at the Whiting -- that and the problem of where to park my car downtown overnight. It would make a great story to tell of the scary punk who shook me down with a switchblade in a lonely hallway, but that didn’t happen. The few people I met were friendly and upbeat.
I tip-toed out of my room a couple of times later that night and the halls were as empty and quiet as a church. Turns out there’s a curfew here for residents who are following a program to re-enter society as better citizens.
I shrugged and went back to my room. Slept like a baby.