Downtown hotels

Any new info on Glen on Peace? Also in place of Red Hat Amphitheater, there should be a 30+ story mixed use with a convention center bottom and restaurants and on top a 400+ bed hotel.

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They should dust off the plans for the Soleil Center and put that there.

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CanesFan - I agree! Would love to see that project come back to life!

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soleil-center-rendering_400xx366-367-0-27 It would be a good time to redo plans for the Soleil Center and put this at the News & Observer Site.

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While I’m glad to see the Nash Square hotel announcement, I am disappointed that it’s not bigger. 190 rooms is good, but 290 or 390 rooms would be better!

Speaking of hotel rooms, I really think that the industry needs some fundamental disruption from a scale perspective. I can’t tell you how many times I stayed alone on business trips in a 2 double/queen bed hotel room by myself. That’s capacity left on the table. Now I’m not saying that the rooms have to be tiny, but a hotel developer can look honestly at its market data and realize that a good percentage of the rooms are occupied by one person: especially during conventions. Using this data can result in more efficient rooms, yielding more rooms in future hotels. Certainly developers should continue to provide large rooms that will sleep 4 for families, but those shouldn’t be most of the rooms. This is especially true downtown.

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These massing studies make no sense to me given the gigantic garage that’s anchoring it.

Those missing rooms will be occupied by cars even though many convention goers fly to Raleigh and take ubers…

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Hopefully the developer has the foresight to make the parking levels convertible to occupiable space in the future. I completely agree about how people will come to downtown.

John, great observation. The disruption of offering smaller rooms is already underway:

Couldn’t find a better link but it mentions the basics

The next step is offering these small rooms with no personnel at front desk with the aid of technology. Just send in a cleaning crew and maintenance as required as seen in Europe already.

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Thanks for the link to the article. It just makes total sense, and not just for Millennials. Some of the hotels I’ve stayed in recently were over 500 square feet. Heck, that’s a studio apartment these days!

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Winwood Hospitality Group has purchased the Firestone autoshop downtown with plans to develop at a later date. Bizjournals has just posted an article They also plan to begin building the Courtyard Mariott hotel next to the convention center where Enterprise rent a car is during the 4th Qtr of 2019.

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If the article is correct. The Firestone building will sit abandoned for years until the development group ‘assesses’ the situation with the other hotels being built. This is another non-starter project.

We had a record breaking 17+ million tourists last year in Wake County. A lot of them flying in and ubering. If you lower the parking requirements even more you probably see more of these projects going up faster.

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Who specifically is allowing all of this mediocre design into the city center? Is there absolutely no design review process?

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Apparently the state government prevents cities from having robust design requirements.

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Good question!
Does anyone here have any knowledge in regards to why DTR seems to come up short (IMHO) when we build hotels and other such structures? I am of the mindset that the developers are just trying to make a buck (nothing wrong with that) and aren’t trying to be different or even go outside the box (pun intended). Maybe it’s not the city?

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I can’t remember the specs for the Courtyard Marriot. I feel like I remember 12 stories but not sure about the number of rooms. With that being such a prime spot next to the convention center and it being public knowledge that Raleigh is having a hard time pulling larger conventions because of the lack of hotel rooms, I’m shocked there’s no plans to increase the size of that hotel. I would think 20 stories at least.

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Oh for f***'s sake.

Does anyone know what’s going on with the derelict garage right next to this at the corner of Davie and McDowell? (It doesn’t sound like that land was part of this purchase.) You have a blighted property on one of the main avenues people take into DTR, and it’s just awful.

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So were they just too lazy to draw in the surrounding community here, or what? It looks like they’re building that thing out in Zebulon.

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The NE corner of Davie and McDowell was announced like 2 years ago for a 13 story dual branded hotel: Hilton Garden Inn & Homewood Suite. Hilton Garden – The Raleigh Connoisseur

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