Sep 25, 2016 3 min read

For years, Judy Lohr and her husband Bill ran the Carlton Motel and adjacent Carlton Kitchen restaurant, feeding guests, locals and approaching motorists on Interstate 70 who could immediately access the place, which sits just off the Kammerer exit.

Lohr, 74, whose husband died eight years ago, closed the restaurant Sept. 15, although the 25-room motel remains open.

“It was a darn good business. For quite awhile, it was good,” Lohr said last week during an interview at the empty eatery. “I’m happy to say it was mine.”

Simply put, Lohr is finished with working what she said often amounted to 20-hour days – signing in guests, checking them out, then rising in the wee hours of the morning to begin breakfast preparations, which in addition to being convenient for guests was popular among locals.

“I want to retire,” she said.

The Carlton Motel opened in 1953 as a seven-room operation by Ray and Cecilia Carl, who added rooms throughout the 1950s. The final room expansion brought the Carlton to 25 units in 1960, when they added the Carlton Kitchen restaurant and a swimming pool.

The Lohrs, who owned the nearby Avalon Motel, purchased the Carlton property in 1980, and for 20 years operated both sites until selling the Avalon in 2000.

After purchasing the Carlton property, they added a banquet room above the restaurant.

“We had the Lions Club, birthday parties, Christmas parties,” Judy recalled. “It was a fun thing.”

But after awhile, the 20-hour days began to take their toll, Judy said. She noted that she would take a nap in the afternoons, timing it for before guests would begin checking in for the evening and before she would prepare for dinner at the restaurant and any banquets that were booked.

“When you’re in this business, you’re married to it,” she said.

The Carlton also enjoyed the natural gas boom that swept through Southwestern Pennsylvania late in the last decade.

“We had three years of always being full. The motel was actually overfilled,” she said, “but they left in November” of last year. “We have had some spurts with the pipeline guys.”

Over the years, the restaurant gradually cut back its hours, ending the banquets and offering only breakfast and lunch and closing at 1:30 p.m.

Judy also acknowledged that the traditional business model of the family-owned motel-restaurant combination – once commonplace in America’s towns and along its major highways – has also changed.

“Moms and pops are out,” she said. “We aren’t big like the chains are. It became harder to buy real food for the restaurant, the kind without preservatives.”

Judy said she began marketing the place not long after Bill died. She has had “some bites” recently, but so far, no takers.

But even partial retirement is something she enjoys.

After never having bowled in her life, she recently joined a senior bowling league.

“It’s fun. I need to do some things that I want to do while I still have my health.”