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New hotel planned for downtown Akron
BENJAMIN WHITE
Associate Editor
Published: July 23, 2013
On a sweltering afternoon last Tuesday, Akron business leaders and press gathered in the banquet room at Greystone Hall for the announcement of the first new hotel built in downtown Akron in four decades.
The 160-room, independent hotel would take the place of the now-vacant High Street Christian Church and connect to the 96-year-old Greystone Hall. A French bistro is planned for the bottom floor of the former Masonic temple, which used to serve as a lunchtime meeting place for much of Akron’s legal community.
“I think it’s a perfect match to make this a successful project,” said Akron Mayor Don Plusquellic.
The hall, currently owned by the city, and church would be purchased by Greystone Partners LLC, a group of five businessmen from the Akron area. The group enlisted the help of Amerimar Realty Company, a Philadelphia real estate investment and development company with a record of restoration projects.
Though the financial details of the $40 million project remain unresolved, the speakers indicated the Greystone investors would seek tax increment funding from the city and historical tax credits from the state or federal government.
Plusquellic, who compared the difficulty of the project to the recent push to bring a grocery store to Highland Square, said the Greystone partners came to him two years ago with the rough plan.
“If it was easy, anyone could do it and it would have been done a long time ago,” the mayor said. “We’re extremely pleased and thankful that they took an interest.”
William Ginter, who joined Steven Coon, David Jursik, attorney Joseph Parsons and Donzell Taylor to form Greystone Partners, repeatedly used the term “destination quality” during the presentation.
“Destination quality hotels are ones that have a sense of place,” he said. “They reflect where they are. They speak to who that community is and who that community aspires to be. It doesn’t look like any other hotel where you can stay at any interchange in the United States.”
David Marshall, who spoke on behalf of Amerimar, summarized his track record of challenges to make new hotels from refurbished buildings without a national chain flags. He cited his company’s creation of the George Hotel in Washington, D.C.
“We took an old building that was an SRO (single room occupancy) and converted it into one of the best hotels in Washington,” he said. He also drew attention to Amerimar’s creation of the Rittenhouse Hotel, a 5-star Philadelphia hotel that he said competed with the Ritz Carlton and Four Seasons.
“It’s really not a problem because your bottom line is better,” he said. “You’re really depending on excellent care and excellent service.”
With The University of Akron closing its Quaker Square Inn in favor of using the rooms exclusively for dorms, the only viable downtown lodging remains the Akron City Center Hotel, which recently relinquished its Ramada flag and has drawn criticism for its lack of modern full service.
Roetzel & Andress partner Brian Moore, who represented the Masons when Jeff O’Neill bought Greystone Hall in 1998, said the project will benefit his firm, which often sends potential clients and other guests to Hilton Akron/Fairlawn.
“It happens all the time,” he said. “In terms of first rate modern hotels, for a while we haven’t had that.”
“As an Akron guy that’s very supportive of Akron, I just think that you’ve got to have it downtown – it’s much more convenient.”
Moore also represented Roetzel during the process of repurposing the former O’Neil’s building for use as the flagship firm’s Akron headquarters. He said that a comparison between the two projects would be impossible to make due to the unique nature of every historical renovation.
Marshall said he expects six to eight more months of planning before the shovels hit the ground and 18 months of construction before the hotel opens.
“It’s exciting to see another building that’s a part of Akron’s history being hopefully reborn into something that is modern and becomes a community asset for a long time,” said Moore.