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Hotel Hell: What happened to Juniper Hill Inn?

Is Hotel Hell coming back?

The Juniper Hill Inn unfortunately closed down just a few years after it was featured on Hotel Hell and the property is now under new ownership.

There are always a few episodes from each of Gordon Ramsay’s wildly successful reality television franchises which just seem to stick with the fans and viewers who watched them.

As a result, it is almost impossible to discuss anything Hotel Hell-related without also mentioning the Juniper Hill Inn (which was the focus of the first two episodes of the series) or its owners, Robert Dean II and Ari Nikki.

The Juniper Hill Inn’s fate after Hotel Hell

While Ramsay’s efforts to turn this struggling Vermont-based inn and its ultra-selective art-aficionado owners around were certainly entertaining to watch, it seems like they were not very effective.

The Juniper Hill Inn ended up closing just a few years after the episode first aired, and it is now being run by new owners, under a new name.

However, the inn’s closure did not prevent the internet rumor-mill from churning out a few juicy tidbits.

While Robert and Ari have kept their personal lives incredibly private after this brief reality show appearance in 2012, some internet sleuths have reported what looks to be a mugshot of Ari which were taken in Florida in 2015 after he assaulted a law enforcement officer.

But since this arrest has never been verified, the jury is still out on whether these rumours are true.

Either way, it has now been more than a decade since this episode premiered, and the former Juniper Hill Inn and its former owners have now seemingly all moved on with their lives.

The decline of the Juniper Hill Inn

Juniper Hill Inn’s story is sadder than that of most of the businesses that end up closing down after their episodes have aired.

Ultimately, Robert and Ari had fallen about six months behind on their rent by the time that the inn was foreclosed.

And by the time the new owners purchased it in 2014, its value had already decreased by more than half, as follows:

Year Description Juniper Hill Inn’s value
2005 Robert Dean II and Ari Nikki purchase the property $1.6 million
2014 U.S Bank purchased the property at the foreclosure auction $405,000
2015 Kenni Lucci and Brenda Bradley purchase the property $400,000

What happened after Gordon Ramsay left the Juniper Hill Inn

Robert and Ari’s post-Hotel Hell Facebook message confirms that many of the Juniper Hill Inn staff members who appeared in the episode ended up leaving the hotel shortly after Ramsay and his team did.

This includes chef Giulian Jones, who has gone on to have a very successful career as a private chef and has even cooked for celebrities like Beyonce and the Foo Fighters.

And it seems like they left with good reason, as some of the reviews from just before the Juniper Hill Inn closed confirm that Robert and Ari reverted back to their old ways after Ramsay’s visit.

One particularly scathing one-star review from August 2012 complains about poor service at the restaurant, a lack of communication from Robert and the cold temperature inside of the inn.

The state that the Juniper Hill was in when it was sold

It turns out that the Juniper Hill Inn’s drastic decline in value may have been about more than simply its former owners’ bad reputation and mounting debts.

Siblings, Kenni Lucci and Brenda Bradley, who are the property’s new owners, spoke to and provided some insight about the condition of the property when it was sold.

Reportedly, the new owners confessed to nearby reporters that the inn had been left in a state of disrepair by its previous owners and that the property was full of boxes with unused merchandise.

The hotel that has replaced the Juniper Hill Inn

Kenni and Brenda eventually re-opened this historic inn a while later in 2016, under the new name ‘Windsor Mansion Inn’.

According to the Windsor Mansion Inn website, Kenni and Brenda spent a considerable amount to completely renovate and restore the inn before its grand re-re-launch.

The couple told Valley News in 2015 that they were planning on spending between $500,000 and $700,000 on the project, and it now features 16 different completely upgraded rooms.

It also includes a pub, several outdoor terraces, a private library, outdoors spaces fit for games and socializing, as well as a wedding venue, which can accommodate up to 130 people.

This new inn seems to be doing quite well, and has an almost-perfect record of 5-star reviews on TripAdvisor, a score of 4.6 out of 5 on Trip.com, and an equally-impressive  9.2 out of 10 score on Trivago.