A group of investors are planning to spend $ 5 million to turn an outdated Best Western on struggling St. Paul Square in the Middle East into a trendy boutique hotel.
If work goes as planned, the Aiden Hotel will replace the Best Western Plus Sunset Suites Riverwalk in October.
The new property opens with updated and new rooms and the restoration of a basement building that operated in the building during Prohibition from 1920-1933.
The COVID-19 pandemic may not be over yet, but investors believe the good times will at least partially recur when the renovation is completed in October.
“In 1918 they experienced the same thing (the flu pandemic) and in 1920 people celebrated so much that they had to introduce a ban,” said Marc Weinstein, one of three owners of the hotel.
San Antonio tourism officials hope the pandemic will have eased significantly by next fall. Leisure travelers will return in large numbers, even if business travelers and conventions still stay away.
Downtown hotels saw the worst year in their memories in 2020. According to the travel data company STR, the average occupancy rate for the year fell from 70.8 percent in 2019 to 35.8 percent. Average revenue per available room in downtown hotels declined from $ 106.25 in 2019 to $ 44.27 last year.
The Best Western affiliated hotel will remain open during renovations. Prices were $ 170 per night during the spring break earlier this month. Most days, however, rooms can be booked for as little as $ 64 per night due to the lack of demand.
New hotel owners Weinstein and Tibor Ritter, a retired anesthesiologist from San Antonio, and his wife Daniella want to fill more rooms and raise rates north of $ 100 a night after the renovations are complete.
More vacationers would help the Aiden Hotel, but not entirely.
“What will drive the higher rates is the return of convention,” said Chris Hagee, CEO of Hagee Hospitality, the management firm that runs the hotel. While most of San Antonio’s conventions have been canceled for 2021, Hagee said he hoped convention attendees and business travelers would return in 2022.
The hotel is one block from the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center, which makes it a little addicting to the convention business. But it’s also cut off from Interstate 37 from the facility – and the rest of downtown. Guests must stroll under the freeway on an often deserted stretch of East Commerce Street.
St. Paul’s Square can also appear as a second choice for a hotel stay. Many of the storefronts near the hotel are empty and restaurants have come and gone. Several plans for nearby mixed-use residential and retail development in the neighborhood have stalled.
The hotel consists of two buildings. As a result of the redesign, the 4-storey hotel, which was built in 2000, will be expanded by a 5th floor, increasing the number of rooms from 64 to 79.
The hotel’s lobby building dates back to 1910 and is a historic San Antonio landmark. The new owners will keep the brick exterior, but the western-style interior will be replaced with a more contemporary look.
The speakeasy, which has yet to be named and which is now used as a laundry room in the basement, is being rebuilt from scratch.
The hotel will continue to be associated with Best Western, a membership organization of individually owed hotels that provides access to an international reservation system. The Aiden is a Best Western boutique brand that advertises its hotels as individually designed with a “cool, relaxed personality”.
However, with only nine Aiden Hotels in the world, the brand is not as well known as the hotels run by Hilton Hotels & Resorts and Marriott International, both of which offer strong loyalty programs.
That could make the promotion of the Aiden more difficult.
“I don’t know many people who are passionate about Best Western customers,” said Tucker Johnson, assistant professor on the San Antonio campus of Conrad N. Hilton College of Hotel and Restaurant Management, University of Houston.
The hotel owners said they would have got a better deal if they stayed at Best Western. They give the parent company 7 percent of gross revenue for rooms, compared to 11 percent for chains like Hilton and Marriott.
Weinstein and the Ritters rely on local grill eatery owner Stanley Shropshire to fill visitor spaces and entice locals to the speakeasy and a new lobby bar and coffee shop in the hotel.
Shropshire owns the Big Bib BBQ Restaurant and Big Bib Too, a concert and special events venue, in the North Hills Shopping Center on the Austin Highway. Weinstein and the knights own the shopping center. They asked Shropshire to help run the hotel’s food and beverage operations.
Shropshire grew up on the East Side, nine blocks from the hotel.
He is disappointed that much of the planned development in St. Paul Square never took place, but said that local residents have more purchasing power than they used to. He hopes the hotel’s nightlife will help finally make St. Paul Square a destination for visitors and locals alike.
“There’s a new spark of life now, with new people coming – people with disposable income,” he said.
Shropshire said the speakeasy will have barbecue and music, cocktails and a secret code for entry.
Paulsplatz has seen signs of life lately.
In November, Thomas Hogan and Gerardo De Anda opened a second location of their Stone Oak restaurant, Cuishe Cocina Mexicana, one block from the hotel. They also own a tapas restaurant, Toro Kitchen + Bar, which has been operating successfully in St. Paul Square for more than three years.
On a Saturday evening, the Toro Kitchen + Bar was full of customers. One musical group was playing Spanish folk music and another was playing Latin pop on the terrace.
Ian Sam, the manager of both restaurants, Ian Sam, said the renovated hotel and speakeasy can only help.
“It will help make the area livelier,” he said.
Weinstein insists that being separated from downtown by the freeway is not a bad thing.
“We like this breakup,” he said. “The River Walk is geared towards pure tourism. Fun to go there but this will be more of an area with live music venues. Kind of like a hot off-hours area. “
Weinstein and the Knights happen to be hotel owners. The couple has ruled out the previous owner of the hotel. He had defaulted about $ 4 million that they loaned him.
“We needed some excitement in our lives,” joked Daniella Ritter about her decision to renovate and run the hotel.
She and her husband then teamed up with Weinstein, whose late father, Attorney Richard Weinstein, was involved in numerous real estate development deals with the Knights such as shopping malls and self-storage operations.
Daniella Ritter believes the Aiden Hotel could raise rates to $ 200 a night in 2022 when business travelers take effect.
randy.dimond@express-news.net
