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New hotels revitalize peninsula’s Ashley River area
By Dennis Quick
Senior Staff Writer
Last month, the Best Western hotel at 250 Spring St., near Lockwood Drive, held its grand opening. The eight-story, 151-room hotel is a former Howard Johnson hotel purchased in April 2006 by Charleston Hotel Owners LLC, which spent about $4 million renovating the building.
In May, the nearby Charleston Marriott on Lockwood Drive held its grand opening. The 14-story, 340-room hotel, formerly the Charleston Riverview hotel, was purchased two years ago by Greenville-based JHM Hotels. JHM officials would not disclose renovation costs.
Real estate and hospitality professionals expect these two full-service hotels, whose names are recognized internationally, not only to draw more visitors to peninsula Charleston’s “gateway,” the western approach to the city from Savannah Highway’s crossing of the Ashley River, but to spark more revitalization in that area.
“This whole area has been in play for many years, so we don’t consider ourselves pioneers,” said Robert DeMoura, a broker with Charleston-based CC&T Real Estate Services and a partner in Charleston Innkeepers LLC. Charleston Innkeepers teamed up with Santa Barbara, Calif.-based Somera Capital Management’s Somera Realty Fund to form Charleston Hotel Owners, a temporary entity established just for the Best Western project.
In 1998, the city adopted a 10- to 15-year plan to revitalize the gateway area, which for years had been an unattractive corridor. Steps toward revitalization had already been taken along Lockwood Avenue, with the creation of Joseph P. Riley Jr. Park, home of the Charleston RiverDogs minor league baseball team, and the opening of Brittlebank Park, a waterfront park offering access to the Ashley River.
In 2002, real estate giant The Beach Co. opened The Bristol luxury condominiums and later added a marina to that development.
JHM began renovating the Charleston Riverview into the Charleston Marriott in 2005. That’s when Charleston Hotel Owners started looking at the old Howard Johnson hotel as a potential Best Western.
“With the total renovation of the Charleston Riverview hotel into a Marriott, thereby making the waterfront a multi-dimensional market, we felt the timing was right to invest in Charleston,” said Bryan Nearn, a principal in Memphis, Tenn.-based hospitality investment services firm Mountaintop Management LLC, which is operating the Best Western. Nearn is also a Charleston Hotel Owners partner.
The Best Western’s nightly rates range from about $90 to $200. Amenities include upgraded furnishings, 32-inch flat-screen televisions, suites, a business center, a fitness room, a dining room, meeting space and a pool. The hotel is targeting “mid-market” travelers, visitors seeking accommodations less expensive than Charleston’s posh hotels but of a higher caliber than lower-tier hotels, said Dewaine Smith, the hotel’s manager.
Meanwhile, the Marriott’s rates range from $179 to $279 a night. New furniture, 15,000 square feet of meeting space, a rooftop lounge and a restaurant featuring eclectic menus prepared with locally grown ingredients are among the hotel’s amenities, said manager John Wong.
“It’s a typical Marriott,” Wong said, adding that the hotel brand has a strong and loyal customer following.
Both hotels, which remained open during their renovations, hope to attract not just tourists but people visiting the MUSC campus and Roper Hospital, Charleston RiverDog opponents and other athletic teams, plus business travelers.
The renovated hotels mesh with the city’s vision of a new and improved Ashley River district, said Michael Maher, director of the Charleston Civic Design Center.
“They’re contributing to making that area more attractive and to giving it a new identity,” Maher said.
Other contributions to the gateway area include the new municipal complex on Lockwood Avenue, The Citadel’s new football stadium, MUSC’s new hospital and parking deck and the Bee Street Lofts, mid-rise luxury condominiums adjacent to MUSC and offering views of the Ashley River, Maher said.
While the gateway is undergoing its upgrade, streetscapes—including new signs, sidewalks, trees and light poles—are on the drawing board for Spring and Cannon streets, which lead to the gateway. The revitalization of the Spring and Cannon corridor will form a synergy with the gateway improvements and reconnect the gateway with the rest of the peninsula, Maher said.
Hotel investors took notice of all this. The growth of MUSC and the development of the waterfront along Lockwood Drive fueled the interest in transforming the old Howard Johnson into a Best Western, Nearn said.
Dennis Quick is senior staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail him at dquick@charlestonbusiness.com.
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