Small-Scale Development: Eight Case Studies of Entrepreneurial Projects

Dean Schwanke

• Publisher: Urban Land Institute
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9780874203806
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Urban Planning & Landscaping

Are you an entrepreneur interested in developing your first real estate project? These case studies describe how eight properties were developed, including multifamily, mixed-use, and commercial space. You will hear the inside story on challenges faced, lessons learned, and gain best practices.

Commercial Developments

21c Museum Hotel Cincinnati

Originally constructed in 1912 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the ten-story 21c Museum Hotel Cincinnati is built of steel and concrete and faced with brick and terra-cotta.

PROJECT SUMMARY

The 21c Museum Hotel Cincinnati is an innovative hybrid of a vibrant contemporary art museum and a 156-room boutique hotel that is at the hub of a growing arts and entertainment district and has contributed to the revitalization of Cincinnati’s downtown. A masterful orchestration of century-old historic details and clean modern design characterizes the project. The building was redeveloped from a property that originally hosted a hotel built in 1912. Visitors to the hotel can enjoy the 3,082-square-foot fine-dining restaurant and 8,000 square feet of gallery, meeting, and event space dedicated to exhibiting art of the 21st century. Open to the public free of charge, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, the 21c Museum Hotel features rotating curated exhibitions of the work of living artists, including site-specific multimedia installations.

QUICK FACTS

Location

Cincinnati, Ohio

Project type

Hotel

Site size

0.346 acres

Land uses

Hotel, museum, retail, restaurant, meeting space

Keywords/special features

Historic preservation, mixed-use development, public/private partnership, renovation, new markets tax credits

Website

www.21cmuseumhotels.com/cincinnati

Project address

609 Walnut Street

Cincinnati, Ohio 45202

Master developer

21c Museum Hotels

Louisville, Kentucky

www.21cmuseumhotels.com

Development partner

Cincinnati Center City Development

Corporation (3CDC)

Cincinnati, Ohio

www.3cdc.org

Design architect/interior design

Deborah Berke Partners

New York, New York

www.dberke.com

Executive architect

Perfido Weiskopf Wagstaff + Goettel

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

www.pwwgarch.com

A distinctively different hotel, the 21c Museum Hotel Cincinnati features not only historic architecture but also fine art in a museum-quality setting. The project is also an exemplary public/private partnership. To succeed, the developer and the partnership had to overcome substantial market challenges; in fact, the hotel was the first full-service hotel to be developed in Cincinnati in 28 years. Opened in November 2012 in the city’s central business district, the $57.4 million redevelopment is in the fortunate position of being both a major contributor to—as well as benefiting from—the recent economic and cultural resurgence in the city’s downtown. Major redevelopments, such as the Banks on the nearby riverfront, and the Over-the-Rhine neighborhood (just north) have stimulated new retail, restaurant, and residential activity downtown that attracts locals and tourists.

The Site and Development Background

Cincinnati’s central business district, with more than 18 million square feet of office space and 61,000 full-time employees, hosts the headquarters of seven Fortune 500 companies. The city’s 21c Museum Hotel is very much in the center of the downtown and at the hub of the Sixth and Walnut arts and entertainment district, with the Aronoff Center for the Arts right across the street and the Zaha Hadid—designed Lois & Richard Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art next door.

Looking back just a dozen years, Cincinnati’s recent past—and the history of the 21c Museum Hotel Cincinnati building itself—offers the story of many an urban downtown, with a fresh trend of economic revitalization after a period of disinvestment and suburban migration.

In 1912, the building housing the current 21c Museum Hotel Cincinnati—now listed on the National Register of Historic Places—opened as the ten-story Metropole Hotel, built of steel and concrete and faced with brick and terracotta. The neoclassical revival building originally featured 178 guest rooms, an expansive hotel lobby, a formal dining room, a grand ballroom, a semicircular staircase from the basement to second floor, and decorative plaster ceilings. A 1924 addition to the hotel added another 222 guest rooms and a penthouse. The hotel stayed in operation until 1971, when the property underwent a $3.55 million remodeling and conversion to low-and moderate-income subsidized apartments, consisting of 220 one-bedroom units and ten efficiencies. However, in the following decades, the property faced deteriorating living conditions and increasing crime issues.

In 2009, a local development organization, the Cincinnati Center City Development Corporation (3CDC), acquired the building for the purposes of revitalization and over the next 18 months worked with remaining tenants to provide them with counseling and relocation services. Observes Stephen G. Leeper, president and chief executive officer (CEO) of 3CDC, “Acquiring the old Metropole Hotel was partly based on intuition. We said, ‘Why wait?’ We saw it as a special building that could be a success as a hotel.” In 2011, 3CDC entered into a development agreement with 21c Museum Hotel Group and helped facilitate the purchase of the property by 21c Museum Hotels.

Located in the heart of downtown Cincinnati, the development emerged from a public/private partnership with 21c Museum Hotels, the city of Cincinnati, and the Cincinnati Center City Development Corporation, a nonprofit real estate development and finance organization also known as 3CDC.

The Idea and Concept

The creative force behind 21c Museum Hotels is Laura Lee Brown and Steve Wilson, wife-and-husband art collectors and entrepreneurs based in Louisville, Kentucky. Brown is the great-granddaughter of the founder of liquor company Brown-Forman, whose brands include Jack Daniel’s and Southern Comfort. Wilson is a former public relations officer for four Kentucky governors. Born of a passion to integrate contemporary art into everyday life, the original 21c Museum Hotel opened in 2006 in Louisville.

The inaugural 21c Museum Hotel in Louisville has since bred seven more 21c Museum Hotels that are open or under development in Cincinnati, Ohio; Bentonville, Arkansas; Durham, North Carolina; Lexington, Kentucky; Kansas City, Missouri; Nashville, Tennessee; and Indianapolis, Indiana. Each is its own distinctive blend of community restoration project, cultural institution, and social hub. In merging a hotel and a museum, this novel approach is grounded in the founders’ belief that art can drive commerce. Curated by a staff of ten in 21c’s museum department, each hotel displays selections from the couple’s modern art collection throughout the property, in guest rooms, lobbies, restaurants, and extensive on-site galleries that host rotating shows and double as event and meeting spaces.

The Cincinnati hotel’s location in the central business district is ideal; when it opened in November 2012, the property sought to advance 21c’s mission of engaging the public with contemporary art and supporting the revitalization of urban areas. It’s a recipe that has proved highly popular: 21c Museum Hotel Cincinnati was ranked as the number-one hotel in the United States by readers of Condé Nast Traveler in 2013.

Visitors and residents of Cincinnati alike can enjoy 8,000 square feet of gallery, meeting, and event space d...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Copyright
• Title Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• Observations on the Case Studies
• Multifamily Residential Developments
• Multifamily Residential Developments with Commercial Space
• Commercial Developments