A 175-room hotel with an upscale flag new to Charlotte will be part of a larger mixed-use development underway now in SouthPark.
Beacon Investment Management Group, a Charlotte-based hospitality developer and owner, will build a proposed Hyatt Centric hotel at the Apex SouthPark site, at the corner of Morrison Boulevard and Sharon Road. The redevelopment of that site, the former Sharon United Methodist Church, is being led by Charlotte-based Childress Klein and Ascentris, a real estate private equity firm based in Denver.
"(Hyatt Centric) is a unique product that we think fits really well into SouthPark because it (will be) so localized," said Nish Patel, president of Beacon IMG. "The interior design, food offerings ... we think it’ll fit really well in SouthPark."
The hotel flag is still being finalized, Patel said. Beacon IMG expects to begin to lay the foundation for the $50 million hotel by August of this year, with anticipated completion in early 2021, he added.
Under the name SouthPark Hotel LLC, Beacon IMG paid $7 million for a 0.7-acre portion of the Apex SouthPark site in August, according to Mecklenburg County real estate records.
Hyatt Centric is a newer, upper-upscale flag of Hyatt Hotels Corp. (NYSE: H). Hyatt currently has about two dozen Centric hotels open, with at least another 18 in the pipeline internationally. Hyatt says each Centric hotel is "highly customizable" and are designed specifically for the locales they are built in.
Patel said the proposed SouthPark Hyatt Centric will also include a rooftop restaurant operated by a third party and a coffee concept, both of which will be in addition to the larger mixed-use development by Childress Klein and Ascentris. That joint venture is developing two 12-story buildings with 345 apartments and almost 90,000 square feet of ground-floor retail space on site.
Beacon IMG is the latest player to enter the SouthPark hotel submarket, which has at least two other hotels under construction or planned in the coming years — a 150-room Canopy by Hilton behind Fairview Towers and an AC Hotel at Rexford and Roxborough roads, adjacent to the existing Charlotte Marriott SouthPark.
Patel said the Hyatt Centric flag will also offer something new for the SouthPark area and that his group feels confident in the submarket.
"We’re not short-term investors ... we’re investing in SouthPark long term and we believe in the area," Patel said.
Rule Joy Trammell + Rubio is the project architect. JE Dunn Construction is the general contractor. Bohler Engineering is the civil engineer, and Stanley D. Lindsey & Associates is the structural engineer.