By Christopher Johnson
At approximately 9 AM this past Monday, emergency responders were dispatched to the Doherty Hotel in downtown Clare after a vehicle crash.
The driver, a male in his 60s, had been overcome by a medical episode, causing him to panic and accelerate. The red minivan, a Toyota Sienna LE, surged across the rear parking lot behind Isabella Bank and Clare Hardware. Before crossing 5th Street and crashing through the Doherty’s brick exterior.
The impact tore open a cavern between the sidewalk and the hotel’s south-facing hallway, stopping just short of the walls enclosing the Leprechaun Lounge. Beneath a shower of brick, dust, and splintered drywall, emergency responders worked quickly to maneuver the driver from the wrecked vehicle. He was reported to be alert at the scene. Airbags had deployed, though shards of broken glass posed an immediate hazard. Despite the violence of the crash, his injuries were minor, and he was transported by ambulance to the nearest hospital for further evaluation.
Beyond the exterior breach, interior damage was largely cosmetic. A broken door leading to the banquet room suggested how close the minivan came to breaching deeper into the hotel. Fortunately, the destruction was contained to the south hallway, and no one else had been injured during the incident besides the driver.
The vehicle was eventually extracted from the building like a bad tooth, thanks to Snoopy’s Towing, leaving behind a mound of fractured masonry and a haze of dust. Within hours, Central Restoration cleared the debris and sealed the opening with wooden sheeting. The secured area has since been marked for further repair, with a structural engineer expected to assess the damage and guide the next steps.
“Luckily, it’s only a one-story area,” comments Dean Doherty. “There’s nothing over top of it, besides raftering. So, it’s not like a three-story building or anything like that. If there was a perfect place for this kind of thing to occur, this was the place to put it.”
The damaged section was not part of the hotel’s original structure, but an addition built in the early 1980s. As a result, repairs are expected to be more straightforward, since the construction is relatively modern compared to the hotel’s historic core.
