Aloft to be built over new city parking deck at Richardson and Washington streets
A Georgia company plans to build a boutique hotel atop a parking deck to fill a niche for youthful visitors and capitalize on downtown Greenville’s surging attractiveness as a destination city.
The McKibbon Hotel Group of Gainesville, Ga., outlined plans Tuesday for a seven-story, 144-room Aloft Hotel to be built above a new five-story city parking deck.
The hotel and parking deck to be built on 1.28 acres at Richardson and Washington streets will be integrated into Hughes Development Corp.’s ambitious $100 million ONE mixed-use development, developers said.
At a briefing, Randy Hassen, president of McKibbon, described Aloft as a “lifestyle boutique brand. It is different from anything that is in the market today and anything, as far as we know, that will be coming.
“This hotel is geared to younger travelers, which is the largest growing segment – millennials, Gen Xers, and what I call the young at heart.”
In addition to the lodging and parking, the project will include retail along Washington and Laurens streets and perhaps offices on the hotel’s second floor.
Amenities on the hotel roof will include a swimming pool, cabanas, fire pit and dog walk. A bar called “w xyz,” a feature of Aloft hotels worldwide, will overlook the refurbished Piazza Bergamo.
Hassen said Aloft will be “a full-service luxury brand. It is cool, chic, and modern in terms of style and décor and space.”
Not to mention animal friendly, said Lynn Prater, McKibbon’s senior vice president for marketing. Pets are lodged at no charge and get beds and food dishes when their owners check in, she said.
Hassen said construction will begin in November with demolition of an existing parking deck that is contiguous with the city’s deck on Richardson Street. Once the new deck is built, construction will begin on the hotel tower with plans to have it open by mid-2015.
Hughes Development acquired the existing privately operated deck and surface lot on the corner when it purchased the Bank of America high rise, which it plans to upgrade and integrate into the ONE complex.
Hassen said McKibbon is “very bullish” on the Greenville market, seeing strong hotel occupancy today and expectations it will be even stronger by the time Aloft is ready to book rooms in 2015.
He declined to reveal the expected construction cost but said it is “more than normal because of it being an urban project and this being a particularly complex project with a hotel on top of a parking deck. But we feel because of the market location, it is going to be a great investment for us.”
McKibbon is a third-generation family business that started with a grocery store in 1926 and got into the hospitality business in the 1940s. It operates 76 mid- and upscale hotels, all in the Southeast except for one in Chicago. Its brands include Marriott, Hilton and Sheraton. The Greenville Aloft will be its third. It has one in Asheville and one in Charlotte.
McKibbon has had a presence in the Upstate for several years. It operates the Residence Inn by Marriott at the Greenville-Spartanburg Airport. It had a second hotel here but has sold it.
Aloft has 78 hotels worldwide. It is owned by Starwood Resorts and Hotels, which also owns the Westin brand, one of which is in Greenville.
