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Hotel development built from waste management
By Dan McCue
Staff Writer
Strapping, vital and bristling with energy, George Fennell doesn’t seem like a man that’s ever been afraid of anything.
But it was fear that drove him into business, he admitted recently.
And it was fear—the fear of failure—that kept him going, growing his business and starting several others, even at an age when most people would be eyeing retirement.
Fennell, 64, sold his original business, Fennell Waste Management, to Republic Services of Fort Lauderdale a dozen years ago, but shortly thereafter established a new carting business, Carolina Waste Services LLC, which is now Republic’s biggest competitor in South Carolina.
But it’s what Fennell did with the proceeds of the sale of his original business that is perhaps the most eye-opening thing about George Fennell.
At the suggestion of his son Scott, he took an abrupt turn and embarked on a second career as the owner of a handful of hotels.
His first investment was buying a share of the Ansonborough Inn in downtown Charleston. Eventually he bought out all the other partners.
Then, after Fennell and his son had no luck selling two large lots they co-owned on International Boulevard near Charleston International Airport, they decided to go further into the hotel and lodging business. Through their holding company, Fennell Holdings LLC, they opened the Hilton Garden Hotel and, more recently, the Holiday Inn and office complex directly across the street from it.
“A lot of people say the thing about success is that it’s never really finished,” Scott Fennell said.
“I always worked hard to keep the success going,” George Fennell said. “There are just so many places that you can flounder … and I guess I’ve never strayed far from the determination you have to have in waste management.
“Things have to move. You have to go get it. And you have to go get it today rather than tomorrow.”
Raised on a farm in Walterboro, S.C., George Fennell worked his way through the University of Georgia and ultimately went to work for textile and chemical manufacturer Milliken & Co. in Spartanburg. There, he was assigned to find the best way to dispose of the company’s industrial waste.
Intrigued by the business, he started Fennell Waste Management with little more than $1,500 and a single used truck.
“It was hard work,” the elder Fennell recalled. “I was the secretary, foreman, mechanic, salesman and driver. I did it all…because I was afraid to fail. I had a wife and two small children depending on me.
“As the business caught on, I’d hire a driver and then I’d personally drive a second used truck. When I hired another driver, I’d get another truck and do the same thing, until I had established a dependable fleet and felt I could devote all my time to sales,” Fennell said.
In November 1995, after 23 years, Fennell sold the business to Republic. Believing he was solidly out of the waste management business, he bought into the Ansonborough Inn and an adjacent office building as an investment.
But son Scott stepped in and suggested he and his father start a second waste management business and also that they get involved in hotel development.
“I guess you could say waste management was in our blood. It was a business we understood and it’s a business that will always be important to people,” Scott Fennell said.
“When you think of it, everything you see is either going to be recycled or thrown away.”
The new company, Carolina Waste Services LLC, focused on serving the commercial, industrial and construction/demolition markets. Today it has 45 employees and a fleet of 35 vehicles working six days a week.
Still, the hotels mainly fire Scott Fennell’s creative imagination.
In search of what the younger Fennell describes as a “completely new clientele,” through Fennell Holdings LLC, he completely refurbished the interior and exterior of the 37-room Ansonborough Inn, taking out the full kitchens that had been a vestige of its past life as a condominium complex, and revamping it with a classic Charleston look featuring exposed wood ceilings and exposed brick walls.
Under the watchful eyes of Scott’s sister Allison, the Fennells are now fusing the adjacent office building into the hotel, adding five rooms, a business center and an exercise room.
During the family’s initial involvement in the Ansonborough, they went on a bit of a real estate buying spree, investing in the Charleston Regional Business Center on Clements Ferry Road, three sizable lots in North Charleston, and a Mount Pleasant parcel eventually purchased by Automated Trading Desk on which it built its corporate headquarters.
A local hotel manager encouraged the Fennells to buy a Hilton Garden franchise. Groundbreaking for the new Hilton was just weeks before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
“We were OK, though, because we knew the market would stabilize itself before the hotel was finished,” Scott Fennell said.
The same philosophy drove the development of the Holiday Inn, which will receive the Newcomer of the Year Award from the Holiday Inn chain this October. The hotel also recently was ranked 12th out of Holiday Inn’s 900 hotels in a worldwide customer satisfaction survey.
Each hotel currently employs 50. The Ansonborough Inn now employs a staff of 20.
The Hilton is currently being expanded from 128 rooms to 168 rooms. The Fennells are also adding a ballroom and 4,000 square feet of meeting space. But the holding company’s biggest investment to date has been in the state-of-the-art HD videoconferencing center just finished at the Holiday Inn.
The first video conference in the room, held in mid-September, featured a video presentation by U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham and U.S. Rep. Henry Brown, who spoke to a gathering of hotel executives from Washington.
Asked how much the facility cost, George Fennell said he doesn’t think that way.
“Let’s just say it was a project that didn’t have a budget,” he said.
The room was designed and installed by Carolina Sound Communications of West Ashley and engineered by Systems & Services LLC of North Charleston.
But how do they manage it all?
“We don’t have a lot of meetings,” Scott Fennell said. “Instead, we put a lot of faith in our managers and staff.”
Among those they credit for their success are Gregory D. Padgett, the holding company’s CFO, Donna Spitzmiller, its comptroller, Pete Poulatis, its CPA, their hotel management team of Dan Blumenstock and John Masters, and John Chapman, general manager of Carolina Waste Services.
“The other thing is we think of the similarities in our business interests. In waste management we rent containers. In hotels, we rent beds. We’re in rental industries,” Scott Fennell said.
“The other thing is we act on my father’s philosophy of continually working to improve our services—because it’s the one thing that went wrong, not the 20 things that went right, that people remember.”
George and Scott Fennell’s holdings continue to expand. In addition to the hotel properties they own outright, they’re also partial investors in the French Quarter Inn and the Harbor View Inn downtown. In addition, the holding company now also operates a charter air service employing two fulltime pilots.
Asked if he’s still prodded on by fear, George Fennell said he’s gotten better about that, and even manages to take his own charter air service on brief recreational trips.
“But don’t let anybody kid you, no matter how experienced they are, when they start a new venture they’re scared to death,” he said. “You know, if there are two things I’ve learned it’s that business is nothing but people, and if you hire the best people you can, you’re going to be all right.
“The other thing is that you’ve got to invest your profits back into your business and continually recommit to its growth,” he said. “Lots of people make a little money and start buying boats and houses and so on, but I’ve never been that way. I’d rather invest in top-of-the-line equipment.”
Dan McCue is a staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail him at dmccue@charlestonbusiness.com.
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