Paper Valley Hotel in downtown Appleton leaving Radisson brand

We're learning more about changes coming to the Radisson Paper Valley Hotel in downtown Appleton and its franchise affiliation.

The property has been under renovation for he past several months.

After years of being affiliated with the Radisson, the owners of the Paper Valley Hotel, Inner Circle Investments, are now touting a new brand after signing a 20-year deal with Red Lion Hotels to flip ten of their properties nationwide, including the one in downtown Appleton.

"We're very, very excited," Stephen Nalley, managing partner for the ownership group, said. "This is something we courted for over a year. This isn't a decision we made last week. We've been working on this for over a year. We're finally able to get it done, and we're about as excited as we possibly can be."

The name change is expected to happen sometime after May 7.

It comes amid a major renovation with much of the hotel lobby and meeting areas already done.

"There are things we wanted to do at the hotel which were above and beyond that really did not fit the Radisson brand, and RL (Red Lion) was all about them," added Nalley.

A majority of the Red Lion Hotels are based in the western half of the U.S.

This would be the first property in Northeast Wisconsin.

Nalley said, "We really liked the fact that they're a publicly-traded company, that they're investing a lot of money right now in their reservation system and their sales and marketing. They're in growth mode."

As for the ongoing renovations, Nalley told us to expect completion sometime in the spring of 2019.