aLoft - Dallas

We were greeted by Suhas Niak and Ted Hamilton, owners as well as the architect and the management company to give us the low down on this hotel.  First of all, this was originally one of  four Santa Fe Railroad buildings and one time home of Hagger Slacks and OK Paper. 

They have owned the building for the last 10 years and for a while they were unsure what to develop the building as - Apartments, Condos, or a Data Center but recently opened under Starwood's "W" Brand as aLoft.  This is a 9 story Hotel (they actually added the 9th floor) and has 193 rooms and 8000 sq.ft. of meeting space, pool, business center, bar, and a workout facility.  They are currently about 65% occupied with an average room rate of $110.  They indicated this is not bad considering the market conditions and further stated in a bad economy it would normally take 24 months to ramp up and stabilized and they have done it in 12 months.  It is a $42 million dollar project. The development is located in a TIF district of which $4.2 Million came from the City of Dallas, $5 million came from a historic tax credit of which Chevron bought at $1.06 per credit.  The cost per room was between $175,000-$185,000 but if you add in the tax credits it was $125,000.

Andy, the hotel manager then came and gave us a tour of the hotel and it was pretty cool. 

These guys were great.  Thank you for all your time and best wishes to you.

J2M