Family takes hotel from franchise to an eclectic boutique look
Workers carry slabs of marble down the hall as another crew scrambles on kneepads, laying woodlike ceramic tile where hotel guests eventually will stop for their free breakfast.
Saws and hammers clatter in the background as women in blue uniforms scurry down halls with stacks of towels and sheets.
The Dalwadi family were scrambling to complete as much renovation as it could before Super Bowl LI guests arrived at the newly renamed Hotel Ylem (pronounced EYElum) across from NRG Park.
It was 13 years ago this week — when Houston hosted Super Bowl XXXVIII — that the family opened this 79-room hotel, then a Holiday Inn Express franchise.
When the contract approached its end, the family — parents Jay and Kapila Dalwadi plus their four grown children, Manisha, Amisha, Shital and Sumit — decided it was time to trend in another direction.
The family always wanted to use its hospitality skills to help others, and becoming an independent, boutique hotel allows just that.
As design changes got underway, the siblings scoured the internet for ideas for a new name. Late one night, they were Googling keywords, and “ylem” popped up.
“The scientific meaning is the primordial substance from which all things are formed,” Manisha said. “For us, that’s water and mother. Our mother is our glue; she keeps our family strong … and mothers are the source of life, right?
“And water, … nothing can go on without water. We felt that was the perfect name for the hotel.”
Eclectic design
For the first 12 years of this hotel’s life, everything about it bore the stamp of a franchise: the uniforms, the look, its rooms and service.
Manisha said she and her siblings wanted their hotel to be more personal, less corporate. And that chain look wasn’t what they wanted either.
“We told the design team we want to use hospitality to change the world. It sounds very lofty, but this is what we want to do, and this is how we can do it best,” she said.
As a boutique hotel, they want guests to feel at home in rooms filled with an eclectic mix of contemporary, vintage and traditional.
There’s a decorative mailbox on the wall outside each room, and those doors are painted teal, golden yellow, black, coral and turquoise.
“The rooms take on this moody vibe that might be unexpected but is very serene, with pops of color,” said Megan Ybarra-Haney of Duncan Miller Ullmann, which designed Hotel Ylem’s interiors. “It’s a very different kind of room. Not a brand room by any means.”
DMU is best known in Houston for handling the interiors of over-the-top Hotel Zaza and the renovation of Hotel Icon a few years ago.
Gone are the imper- sonal desks, headboards, nightstands and dressers.
Instead, fabric-covered headboards have built-in electrical outlets and USB ports. Painted nightstands are glazed and distressed. Glass-globe pendant lights hang from brightly colored wiring, attached to the wall in an artsy pattern. Closets made of curved metal pipes on elevated stands look more like bellhop carts.
One final touch comes in artwork, pairs of framed messages to make you smile: “Dear bed … I love you.” Or, “Everything works better if you unplug it once in a while … including you.”
In a couple of months, the Dalwadis hope to have their bar, Esperanto, open. When guests have asked where they could walk for a quiet meal or a drink, they haven’t had much to offer. Now they’re working with local bar guru Hal Brock to create a bar menu.
And Houston fashion designer David Peck will design staff uniforms. The Dalwadis aren’t ready for a sneak peek, but they promise they’ll be comfortable, practical, approachable and fun.
Hard work and good luck
Jay Dalwadi, the patriarch of this family, was about 9 years old when his father died. It was the early 1950s in Kholvad, India, and his mother, Maniben Dalwadi, poor and uneducated, was left to raise 10 children by herself.
Most of her children quit school to help support the family, but they decided that Jay, the youngest, would be educated. That he might someday go to college — or even to America — was their dream.
Maniben worked at a brick factory, scooping sand into big pots that she’d carry on her head to the men who worked the brick molds. She watched, asked questions and learned.
“Long story short, we have a brick factory in India today,” Manisha said. Jay Dalwadi earned a bachelor’s degree in chemistry, and in his 20s it was determined that he should marry. He broke tradition by insisting that he and his bride meet first.
Still, his family wanted him to seek the kind of opportunity found in America. Family members pooled their money and sent him halfway around the world for another college degree. They could afford to send only Jay, so while he studied chemical engineering at Texas A&M University, Kapila, pregnant, stayed in India.
When they were finally reunited in Texas, they celebrated with a small white cake: It was daughter Manisha’s third birthday.
Growing up, the siblings were often the only Indian children in their classes, but they learned to love American music, food and people. To understand those around them, this Hindu family went to Catholic, Baptist and Pentecostal services to sample world religions.
A professional engineer, Jay Dalwadi has worked for Bechtel, Brown & Root (now KBR) and other companies in addition to operating hotels, from small independents to franchises.
Now, his children do most of the work.
A few years ago, Sumit, the youngest, launched Dalwadi Hospitality Management LLC to handle the business side of things for their hotels, plus hotel interests elsewhere in Texas and in Tennessee.
In addition to Hotel Ylem, the siblings and their parents own the Holiday Inn Express Intercontinental near the airport and the Summit Inn at Texas 288 and Old Spanish Trail.
All four Dalwadi siblings have bachelor’s and master’s degrees from either the University of Houston or Texas A&M. And they all — except for Amisha, who has rejected all of her family’s mate suggestions — have semiarranged marriages.
Giving back
When they talk about their grandmother, it is in the context of hospitality.
Having known poverty themselves, they had big hearts for others who often came looking for food. Other homes might offer their leftovers to the hungry, but she instead made fresh food for them. She wanted them to feel that they were worth more.
That’s how her American grandchildren treat their hotel guests, and they hope that their guests, in turn, are inspired to do the same.
Multicolored decorative pillows in the guest rooms are for sale — $35 each — and proceeds go to Share Our Strength’s No Kid Hungry campaign.
Illy-brand paper cups are from Lighthouse Louisiana, an organization that trains and employs the blind, and bath products come from eco-friendly Lather.
Charity Water might be the biggest beneficiary of their efforts. All profits from guest-room minibars will go to the nonprofit, as will 9 percent of profits from Esperanto.
The Dalwadis hope to offer more items that give back. They’re looking at Community Cloth, a Houston microenterprise group that helps refugee women who make and sell items to earn money for their families.
On a recent afternoon, artist Janavi Mahimtura Folmsbee, who has a studio at Silver Street Studios, was perched on scaffolding with a can of paint and brushes, working on the mural that passersby surely will see long before they spot the Hotel Ylem sign.
There’s a woman’s face, framed with dark flowing hair. She’s the mother, the giver of life. Flowing patches of blues and greens represent water, and the green barnacles strung throughout are us, the people who will always be here.
“I finally found a name for it — ‘Waves of Wonder,’ ” Folmsbee said. “I’m using mother-of-pearl dust in the paint. It will sort of glow.”