Autoport Motel

What happened after

Pennsylvania's oldest motel (opened 1936); closed permanently December 2015 after owners declared bankruptcy and sold the property.

Closure date on record: 2015-12

What happened on the show

Near Penn State in State College, the Autoport held a distinction few motels can claim: opened in 1936, it was billed as Pennsylvania's oldest motel, a roadside survivor from the earliest days of American car travel. The episode, Swinging for the Fences, framed a bold effort to save a beloved but fading institution. A historic motel in a college town has nostalgia and a built-in market of visiting families and alumni, but nostalgia does not pay the bills if the operation and the building have run down. Melchiorri worked the rooms, the attached restaurant and the guest experience on South Atherton Street, challenging ownership to modernize a nearly eighty-year-old property while preserving what made it a local landmark. His counsel aimed to give a piece of roadside history a viable future, but the economics of an aging motel proved a steep climb.

After the cameras left

The Autoport did not survive. Despite the intervention, the owners declared bankruptcy and sold the property, and Pennsylvania's oldest motel closed permanently in December 2015, less than a year after its Season 5 appearance. The 1936 roadside landmark on South Atherton Street was later tied to lease and redevelopment plans in local coverage, and the site was cleared. This is one of the show's clear losses, a historic property whose age and economics could not be overcome even with a nationally televised rescue. Confirmed closed since December 2015.