Downtown hotel to get a major facelift
Adam’s Mark Hotel in downtown St. Louis will undergo a $63 million renovation and rebranding into the Hyatt Regency St. Louis Riverfront within 18 months, the group that bought the hotel and four sister properties said Friday.
The Chartres Lodging Group LLC, a San Francisco hotel investment and advisory firm, closed Thursday on a deal for the five hotels formerly owned by Creve Coeur-based HBE Corp.
"We sold the last five of our hotels for more than half a billion dollars," Fred Kummer, HBE Corp.’s president and chief executive, said Friday. "We had 25 hotels and were down to five, so the brand can’t survive with such a small number."
In the St. Louis hotel, Chartres Lodging plans to make over the 910 rooms, and all bathrooms, public areas and restaurants in the building, said Robert Kline, president and co-founder of Chartres Lodging. The hotel’s amenities and exterior also will be updated.
The hotel, at Fourth and Chestnut streets, won’t close during the renovations. Kline said he is deciding on the order of the renovations and expects the project will be done by August 2009.
Chicago-based Hyatt Hotels & Resorts is managing the property, but it will keep the Adam’s Mark name until April 1.
The hotel is about a mile from the Hyatt Regency in Union Station creditreports. Kline declined to comment on possible competition between the locations, but Hyatt spokeswoman Lori Alexander said the hotels will cater to different groups: Union Station to tourists and the Riverfront to corporate customers.
The Adam’s Mark Hotel opened in 1986 and became a key luxury spot downtown, encouraging the development of more top hotels, said Gary Andreas, a partner in H&H Consulting, a hospitality consulting firm in Chesterfield.
Chartres Lodging announced in May that it would buy the 4,867-room Adam’s Mark portfolio. A specific price was not disclosed. The other hotels are in Indianapolis, Dallas, Denver and Buffalo, N.Y., and each will receive multimillion-dollar face-lifts. That’s part of Chartres Lodging’s operating model, Kline said.
"We look to find properties we can enhance from a physical, operational and branding perspective," he said.
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