Cambria Suites in final stages of renovation
Almost six years to the day it first opened, the Cambria Suites — built in the shadow of PPG Paints Arena — is getting ready to open again, or so it seems.
The 142-suite hotel on Centre Avenue is in the final days of a dramatic makeover — one that includes a new 3,286-square-foot ballroom, a revamped lobby with a bar about twice the size of the original, and “refreshed” rooms with new carpeting and sleeper sofas, larger televisions, and new mirrors in the bathrooms.
There’s even a new name for the hotel. From the clunky Cambria Suites Pittsburgh at the Consol Energy Center (now PPG Paints Arena), it has been changed to the Cambria hotel & suites Pittsburgh Downtown.
After acquiring the property last year, new owner Meyer Jabara Hotels has spent in excess of $2 million to make the upgrades — all with an eye to expanding the hotel’s clientele beyond game day and concert crowds to include business meetings, weddings and other special events.
The hotel also wants to position itself to take advantage of the proposed redevelopment of the former Civic Arena site across the street. While slow to materialize, the development is expected to include offices, apartments and commercial spaces.
“We think this is the area ripe for the next big thing here in the
‘burgh and we wanted to kind of be on the forefront of it,” said Jackie Gillespie, the hotel’s general manager.
In part, that meant converting the hotel’s unfinished lower level into the ballroom and adding a new bar and restaurant called Share on Centre, which made its debut the night of the Penguins’ home opener. The hotel also put in a banquet kitchen.
Joe Nolan, formerly of Cafe Allegro, serves as executive chef for Share, which specializes in smoked meats, hand-cut fries and pickled items.
Before building the ballroom, the biggest wedding that the hotel could accommodate would have been 60 to 80 people.
Now it can host anywhere from 300 seated to 500 standing.
“We basically quadrupled our meeting space capacity,” Ms. Gillespie said.
The hotel is hoping the space will be used not only for weddings and other social events, but also by businesses and others looking for a place to hold meetings. Ms. Gillespie said the larger space is one of the few available between Uptown and Oakland.
“We kind of saw this Uptown area as a bit of an unserved market from a meeting space standpoint,” she said. “There’s definitely some business and industry here that we think could use our services.”
In the refurbished lobby, which is still a work in progress a week before the hotel’s scheduled grand reopening party Dec. 13, the bar is being doubled in size and new flooring has been installed. There also will be new furnishings and fixtures.
“While we didn’t do anything to the actual footprint of the room, there’s not a surface that hasn’t been touched based on this renovation,” Ms. Gillespie said.
In the guest rooms, the hotel lightened the carpeting and put new mirrors in the bathrooms to counter criticism that the space seemed dark. It also added new bed linens.
Meyer Jabara paid $16.75 million to purchase the hotel in August 2015 from a partnership that included the Pittsburgh Penguins hockey team and Canonsburg-based Horizon Properties Group. While the team no longer is part of the ownership, the Cambria serves as the official hotel of the Penguins.
The hotel’s average occupancy rate ranges from 60 to 65 percent, although it typically does much better on game nights. It is one of two Cambrias in the region. The other is in Washington County.
Besides the renovations on the inside, the hotel also has increased the size of the outdoor patio by a third and installed fire pits, heaters, and furniture.
“The Stanley Cup party is going to be fantastic next year,” Ms. Gillespie gushed.
Take note, Penguins.