September 01, 2017
Hotel Indigo Moves Closer to its New Home at Celebration Pointe
The Peachtree Hotel Group has begun development of the new six-story Hotel Indigo hotel in Celebration Pointe that will feature an interior design that will reflect the Gainesville community in what the hotel brand describes as a neighborhood story.
Though Peachtree, an Atlanta-based hotel management, development and investment company, is developing the project and will manage the property, the hotel is being constructed under the Hotel Indigo brand under InterContinental Hotels Group, or IHG, the same company that owns the Holiday Inn brands.
There currently are 75 Hotel Indigo hotels located internationally, according to the company’s website, and there are plans to open another 75 hotels in the next three to five years.
″[Hotel] Indigo is their boutique-branded hotels, and all of the furnishings, artwork and design concepts are custom for each one,” said Lee Shuman, director of product management at Peachtree. “So even though you find that a lot of the Indigos have the same features and amenities, you’ll see an interior design theme that’ll run throughout the hotel that’s usually based on what they call a neighborhood story.”
The neighborhood story theme includes different aspects of the area the hotels are built in, such as history, music and culture, and blends them together through the hotel décor, Shuman said.
“The Hotel Indigo brand theme essentially goes after people who, when they do like to stay at places, like to have something that is kind of a little bit different,” he said. “They don’t want to stay at the same old Hampton Inn or Courtyard.”
The 92,000-square-foot hotel is being built in Tech Park at Celebration Pointe and adjacent to what Shuman described as an urban park setting that also features office space for Gainesville software company Info Tech.
The hotel will feature 140 rooms of two types: Suites with king beds that are about 350 square feet and suites with double queen beds that are about 415 square feet. The rooms also will feature plush bedding, hard-surface flooring, area rugs and spa-inspired bathrooms.
Also featured will be a 1,000-square-foot pool connected to the lobby and hotel bar, which will serve seasonal and locally sourced food, as well as a large meeting space that can be broken down into three smaller meeting spaces.
An adjacent parking deck is being built by Celebration Pointe that the hotel will be able to utilize, Shuman said.
Hotel Indigo hotels also feature what they call a Neighborhood Guide, which is a touch-screen display that guests can use to connect with other guests as well as to discover information about the local area. This, of course, ties into the hotel’s neighborhood story theme.
Construction of the hotel, which has been in the planning stages for about a year, Shuman said, is expected to cost the company about $18 million, while furnishings and other costs are estimated at $3 million, for a total estimated cost of about $21 million.
The Peachtree Hotel Group owns 35 hotels, mostly throughout the Southeastern U.S., but the company has been expanding outside of the region, with properties in Virginia, Indiana, Texas and Arizona. The company, which Shuman said has been rapidly growing since 2009, currently owns two properties in Jacksonville and recently sold a property in Orlando.
Shuman said Peachtree selected Gainesville, and Celebration Point in particular, because the company likes to develop in areas that provide their guests with numerous amenities to chose from as guests often choose their stay based on what they can walk to from the hotel.
“As much as you can provide within walking distance of the hotel is really like an additional amenity that you’re not having to purchase,” he said. “So it was a very easy decision for us because [Celebration Pointe] is a mixed-use development that’s going to have a lot of these really great amenities for our guests, which we feel really puts us over our competition.”
Ralph Conti, co-managing partner of Celebration Pointe Development Partners, agreed, saying in an interview that he and his associates felt that the Hotel Indigo brand married up nicely with the experience Celebration Pointe attempts to deliver.
“They are experiential,” he said. “Whatever community they go into, they will go to great lengths to design their interior common spaces, and even to a large extent, their suites, to the local area.”
Conti said he and Peachtree plan to have the hotel up and running by this time next year and pointed out that many new announcements will be made between then and now, including announcements on some of the major retailers.
Back to posts ►
