HOUSTON – A new Hyatt Place Hotel is being developed in downtown Houston.
Dallas-based Hall Structured Finance has closed a new first lien construction loan totaling $22.8 million to finance the adaptive reuse of the 70-year-old Southwestern Bell Telephone Co. office building in Downtown Houston into a hotel.
The 150-key all-suite, select service Hyatt Place Hotel is being developed by Anthony and Nick Patel, co-owners of Pride Management on Beaumont, which will manage the property upon completion.
The 16-story Southwestern Building is located at 1114 Texas Avenue, not far from the old Houston Chronicle building, which is now the site of a flat parking lot.
The hotel will contribute to the goal of the Central Houston organization to make the city a major player in the convention industry.
“What we’re really trying to do is become a competitor in the Top 10 convention facilities in America. To do that, we need another 4,000 hotel rooms in addition to 8,000 rooms we have today in downtown,” said Bob Eury, president of the Central Houston organization in a recent interview with Realty News Report. “At the end of 1990s cycle, downtown Houston had four hotels with 1,800 rooms. Today we have 25 hotels downtown and 7,800 rooms. There are three hotel projects in pipeline that could bring us up to 8,300 rooms. With enough hotel rooms, we could ramp up our convention and tourism business.”