Dual-branded hotel opens near Galleria
Houston-based American Liberty Hospitality opened a dual-branded Holiday Inn Express and Staybridge Suites, a 14-story hotel at 2351 W. Loop South in the Uptown area.
Nick Massad Jr., CEO of American Liberty Hospitality, cut the ribbon on the 319-room hotel at a Wednesday ceremony attended by employees of the familyrun business, members of the financing, construction, design teams and Houston First Corp., the city’s convention arm.
Massad said the opening, which was delayed from January to allow time for the hotel market to improve, coincides with a rebound in leisure and business travel nationwide.
The hospitality industry has been hard hit by the coronavirus pandemic, with occupancy rates in Houston falling to 42.3 percent in 2020 from 62.9 percent in 2019, according to research firm STR. Revenue per available room fell by 46 percent to $34.21 in 2020.
The moderately priced property inside Loop 610, just north of Westheimer, has a medical grade air filtration system and keyless check-in process.
Massad said ALH has been trying to build a hotel in the Galleria area for seven or eight years. Three other sites fell through before securing the West Loop property and financing.
Plains Capital Bank and Artemis Real Estate Partners provided construction financing. Houston-based Arch-Con Corp. served as the general contractor and MCS Architects designed
the hotel.
The hotel has a shared front desk and 150 extended stay suites with kitchens, dishwashers and flexible workspaces, on one side of the building. On the side closer to Westheimer, the Holiday Inn Express has 169 standard hotel rooms. Both brands are franchises of InterContinental Hotel Group.
Nick Massad III, vice president of development, said the hotel reflects large-scale projects done by the company as it has grown. His parents developed their first property from the ground up in Angleton with a 40-room hotel in 1986.
American Liberty Hospitality has 20 properties in markets throughout the Southwest. The new hotel is the company’s second dual-branded hotel in Houston. It opened downtown’s Hampton Inn/ Homewood Suites in 2016.
Friends reunite for café
Agnes Café & Provisions, a venture of childhood friends Molly Voorhees and Carolyn Dorros, will take over the space previously occupied by Tropicales at 2132 Bissonnet in the Boulevard Oaks neighborhood near Rice University.
Voorhees, president of Becks Prime and Chocolate Bar, and Dorros, executive vice president of Houston-based real estate development firm Wolff Cos., both live in the area and attended St. John’s School in Houston.
Agnes Café & Provisions leased 2,225 square feet in the retail and office building developed by Platform Investment Group at Shepherd Drive for an all-day café and boutique grocery. Michael Hsu Office of Architecture designed the building, which opened with all-day café Tropicales as a tenant in 2019. That restaurant closed about a year ago as the pandemic kept people at home.
Set to open in June, the new restaurant will offer indoor and outdoor dining with counter service during the day for pastries, breakfast and lunch and table service at night. The menu will feature Mediterranean food with influences from Spain, France and Turkey, cocktails, beer and hard-tofind wines.
Maury Bronstein and John S. Wall Jr. of 1912 Ventures represented the tenant in the lease. Steve Ybarra of Platform Investment Group represented the landlord, Houston Bissonnet Shepherd LLC. The initial term is five years with options for renewal, Voorhees said.
Sean Garrison and Levi Lemaster of Garrison Design Office were tapped to design the interior, 500-square-foot patio and grocery retail space, which will sell gifts, graband-go items, baked goods and cookie dough.
Voorhees will draw upon the operating team of Becks Prime, a locally owned restaurant chain in business for 36 years, to facilitate operations of the new restaurant, which will employ about 25 people.
“There’s a huge advantage to having a team that already knows what they’re doing,” Voorhees said.
Meritage buys land
Meritage Homes has purchased 24 acres near the Grand Parkway and Westpark Tollway in west Houston for Grand Trails, a community of 129 homes priced in the mid $200,000s. The community and model home are projected to open in May.
Homes will range from 1,477 to 2,800 square feet and be built on 45-foot by 120-foot lots. The neighborhood, which is zoned to Lamar Consolidated ISD, is east of Peek Road near Beechnut.