Kurt’s quotes (see below for details and context):
Charlotte has a hotel-condo combo on Caldwell Street uptown, where a 172-room Hyatt Place hotel shares a building with the 69-unit Skye condo project, but the city doesn’t have any apartment-hotel combinations (at least that I’m aware of). The concept is starting to show up in other markets such as Cleveland, New Orleans and New York, but there are reasons why it’s a rarity, says Kurt Schoenhoff, vice president of hospitality and brokerage services with Selwyn Property Group.
The combination of uses potentially makes it more complicated for each component to be sold, Schoenhoff says. In an apartment-hotel combination, each use would typically have to be structured as a separate condominium unit, which could be a tougher sell for a hotel buyer, for example. “From an investor standpoint, they prefer the hotel to own the land free and clear,” he says.
Full Article:
Two development firms are planning a mix of uses that would be a first in Charlotte: combining hotel rooms with apartments in a single building.
Brian Leary, president of commercial and mixed-use at Crescent Communities, tells me the firm is looking at building 75 to 100 rental units on top of a planned 300- to 400-room hotel at its Tryon Place development on South Tryon Street.
“We’d also like to have residential units on top of the hotel,” he says. “Brian Natwick, my partner who runs the multifamily business, is poking his head into our design meetings saying, ‘You’ve got to save me some units.’ So 75 to 100 units would work well on top of the hotel. They could be branded together.”
Leary says Crescent will study whether apartments or condos make more sense for the site, but apartments have become a core focus area for Crescent.
In midtown, meanwhile, Levine Properties is planning a 25-story tower that would combine 155 apartments with 175 hotel rooms on a 1.3-acre parcel adjacent to Metropolitan.
“I’ve seen a lot of condo buildings integrated with hotels, but I haven’t seen a lot of apartments,” principal Daniel Levine said when I spoke to him recently for a story about the company’s growing apartment portfolio. “And there’s a good reason for that. Anytime you integrate uses like that, it’s a challenge.”
Charlotte has a hotel-condo combo on Caldwell Street uptown, where a 172-room Hyatt Place hotel shares a building with the 69-unit Skye condo project, but the city doesn’t have any apartment-hotel combinations (at least that I’m aware of). The concept is starting to show up in other markets such as Cleveland, New Orleans and New York, but there are reasons why it’s a rarity, says Kurt Schoenhoff, vice president of hospitality and brokerage services with Selwyn Property Group.
The combination of uses potentially makes it more complicated for each component to be sold, Schoenhoff says. In an apartment-hotel combination, each use would typically have to be structured as a separate condominium unit, which could be a tougher sell for a hotel buyer, for example. “From an investor standpoint, they prefer the hotel to own the land free and clear,” he says.
Levine says there are also benefits to be had for his firm, a long-term owner of real estate. With the mixed-use project at the Metropolitan, he says, he plans to target similar customers with each use, making it easier to integrate the two communities and deliver a high quality of service to both.
“We’ll be able to offer amenities in the hotel that other 175-unit hotels cannot offer because of the volume of the apartments and vice versa,” he says. “For example, we’re going to have an amenity deck up around the seventh floor of the parking garage that will be unrivaled in Charlotte. We’re anxious to get that going. We’re close. We’ve submitted applications for the hotel (flag), and we’re interviewing operators now. We want to affiliate with the right flag to help us with the branding and the reservation system.”
