I usually stay tend to stay in business class hotels (Hyatt, Marriott, Hiltons) when I travel for work, but I had to schedule a last minute trip to VCU and ended up taking a room here as part of an airfare-hotel package. I've had good experiences with Comfort Sites, so I didn't think twice about staying here. After reading some of the terrible reviews, I began to have serious second thoughts.
Maybe I was lucky, but I didn’t have any of the terrible experiences cited. The hotel facilities have seen their better days, but things seem well maintained generally. My room was clean. One of my pet peeves are hotel "smells", stale smoke odors, air fresheners, etc., and after the terrible reviews, I was pleasantly surprised to have nothing of the sort. Of course, I was here in December; summertime humidities tend to bring out the worst in older hotels. The neighborhood isn't as bad as described, I would call it "gritty commercial/blue collar", a major thoroughfare with lots of auto-related businesses, small banks, etc. I wandered eastward down Broad Street to get a sandwich and never felt unsafe (of course, I'm from Chicago so my threshold may be different). There’s the local CBS affiliate offices right across the street (and a view of their towering broadcast tower) out my window.
On a return trip to Richmond I will probably stay at hotel further east closer, and so I probably won't return here, but it was not the disaster I was expecting.