Usually commercial real estate companies find space to help other companies move. Yet in a portfolio sale that helps a Boston-based player expand its footprint in the Richmond market, Colliers International | Richmond found itself a new home as well.
The company signed a 12,375-square-foot lease that will relocate its West End office in the Southern States Headquarters Building off West Broad Street to a building in the Glen Forest Office Park off Forest Avenue in Henrico.
The building at 7200 Glen Forest Drive is one of four in a 150,000-square-foot portfolio that was sold to Grander Capital for an undisclosed price. The seller was Chevy Chase Land Co. Colliers International | Richmond represented both parties in the sale of the properties, and simultaneously leased the largest space.
Grander Capital owns two other properties in Henrico, including a building on North Parham Road and one on Discovery Drive.
“They’re acquisitive and expecting to expand more,” said David Williams, managing director of Collier’s Richmond office. “We’re already working with them on a variety of things in Richmond and other markets.”
Chris Wallace in the firm’s Richmond office, Chris Todd from Colliers’ Norfolk office and Bill Kaye out of Colliers’ Washington, D.C., office handled negotiations on behalf of the buyer and seller. Wallace and Kit Tyler handled lease negotiations on behalf of the lessee.
Colliers expects to move its staff of 45 by Thanksgiving. Its new building, built in 1986, includes 36,363 square feet on three floors. It is bordered by I-64, Broad Street and Glenside Drive. Colliers will occupy the entire second floor. The company has been in its current location at 6606 W. Broad St. since 2004.
Besides being a business opportunity, with Colliers leasing the portfolio space for Grander, “the new office gives us a clean slate,” said Williams. “We want to hire across the board. We have hired millennials, and we’ll continue to do so because there will be more of them soon than anyone else. The floor plan will allow for open collaboration and space to maintain confidentiality for our clients. It will be a good mix.”
Collier also likes the new location, about a quarter of a mile from where it is now. While some companies are flocking back to downtown or to development hotspots such as Scott’s Addition in the city, Williams said a poll of Colliers’ employees found that most of them liked the area. “From a client centric perspective, you can’t get a better logistical location than this. It’s easy access in and out to get to our clients and for them to come to us,” said Williams.
This office will be the primary location for sales, leasing, and brokerage operations. Colliers maintains two other offices in the Richmond area, at 5316 Patterson Avenue and a downtown location in the James Center at 1021 E. Cary St.
The Franklin Johnston group (FJG) said Thursday that it has closed on the purchase of six-acres of property in the Campostella section of Norfolk where it plans to build a $24 million affordable housing apartment community.
The Clairmont Apartments at Campostella Station will be a gated community of 152 apartments. The company said in a press release that rent for the community would range from $690-$995 for one-,two- and three- bedroom apartments.
Wells Fargo is the investment-limited partner for the project.
“We appreciate the opportunity to bring excellent, affordable housing to the Campostella community,” Steve Cooper, senior vice president of development for FJG, said in a statement. “This neighborhood has a rich history, but it’s been underserved with quality apartment homes for far too long. We expect Clairmont to rent up very quickly.”
Once development of Campostella’s newest community is complete in 2017, FJG said it would begin constructing 25 single-family homes adjacent to the property.
NXT Capital, based out of Chicago, has provided a $22.3 million first mortgage loan to finance the recapitalization of Parkway Atrium, a 184,000-square-foot, Class-B office building in Herndon.
According to NXT, the property is centrally located near the Dulles Toll Road, Fairfax County Parkway, the Washington Beltway, Route 7 and I-66. It also offers access to Washington D.C.’s central business district and Dulles International Airport.
Historically, General Service Administration tenants have occupied the property. Going forward, the property will undergo extensive renovations to appeal to a wide variety of potential tenants.
Cary Abod and Robert Carey in the Washington D.C., office of Holiday Fenoglio Fowler LP placed the loan with NXT.
NXT Capital’s Real Estate Finance group primarily serves experienced real estate investors with non-recourse first mortgages of $10 million to $40 million for properties in major markets.
Owners of commercial real estate are increasingly looking to free Wi-Fi to give them a competitive edge.
WaWa, a convenience store retailer known for its fresh-to-order food, and Comcast have teamed up to outfit more than 700 Wawa stores in Delaware, Florida, Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Virginia with access to free Wi-Fi.
As part of a new collaboration between the companies, Comcast Business’s Enterprise Solutions unit installed the managed public/private Wi-Fi network, along with managed broadband, and the team will support both services for Wawa going forward.
There is no charge to use the service.
As part of Wawa's continued focus on becoming a one-stop-shop for its customers' needs, the company said it has turned to technology to evolve the in-store experience. The company needed a fast, reliable Wi-Fi solution to enable a consistent experience for its mobile application, and getting online through Xfinity WiFi allows all Wawa patrons to take advantage of a free connection without having to rely on their cellular service.
“At Wawa we exist to fulfill customers lives every day, and part of this commitment means creating meaningful customer connection points that add the highest level of value and convenience,” Carol Jensen, chief marketing officer for Wawa, said in a statement.
Bill Stemper, president of Comcast Business, noted that as more businesses look to improve the customer experience at branch locations, reliable Wi-Fi has become a cornerstone for attracting and retaining customers.
To meet Wawa’s needs, Comcast Business’s Enterprise Solutions team designed and built an enterprise-grade Managed Wi-Fi and broadband solution that includes public Xfinity WiFi for Wawa customers and private access Wi-Fi for associates and vendors. The scope of the business services implementation includes Wawa locations in and out of Comcast's traditional service areas.
Shoe retailer DSW has opened new stores at Pembroke Mall in Virginia Beach and at Harbour View In Suffolk.
The 16,000-square-foot Pembroke Mall store stocks 21,000 pairs of men's and women's shoes, including name brand and designer shoes and accessories. It's located at 4588 Virginia Beach Blvd.
The 12,000-square-foot store, which stocks the same number of shoes, is located at 1011 University Boulevard in the Hampton Roads Crossing development, anchored by the Kroger Marketplace.
For people who want to shop at home, customers can now order online from dsw.com and use in-store pick-up to get their shoes at their local DSW store.
The stores give DSW a total of five in the Hampton Roads market.
DSW Shoe Warehouse, based in Dublin, Ohio, operates 478 stores in 42 states. It also supplies footwear to 387 locations in the U.S.
JES Foundation Repair (JES) announced on Monday that it has brought on Matt Malone and private equity firm, Succession Capital Partners, as new partners in the rapidly growing, 23-year-old structural engineering firm in Virginia Beach.
Malone will become CEO of JES, overseeing the day-to-day operations of the company, which now has five offices and more than 300 employees.
Jesse Waltz, the co-founder of JES with his wife, Stella, will continue as the company’s president, chief consultant and member of the newly formed board of directors.
Waltz, who started the company in 1993, posted more than $35 million in gross revenue in 2016.
Waltz said in a statement that the move is intended to take JES to the next level. “I have been looking for a CEO to head up JES for several years.” Waltz said. “We've been blessed with phenomenal growth and have a great team already in place However, I felt we needed an operations expert like Matt Malone and Succession Capital team to continue the growth and integrity of the JES brand through maximizing efficiencies.”
Malone said he sees great potential and opportunity in JES. “In my experience, JES is perfectly poised to continue its trajectory to the next level in its transformation from its humble beginnings as a ‘mom and pop shop’ to a regional leader in the industry.”
Malone brings more than 20 years of experience in management, investment and growth strategies focused on growing small, family-owned businesses.
“… Our part of the partnership will be to not only provide additional capital, but to leverage our operational expertise to drive efficiency in all areas of the operation, improve and invest in infrastructure and solidify the success of JES through the attention to detail.”
Besides continuing its growth in the original core regions in Hampton Roads, greater Richmond, Northern Virginia and Greater Washington D.C., JES plans to open an additional office in Maryland and to transition its brand at its newly acquired offices in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia and Indianapolis.
Lansdowne Resort and Spa in Leesburg has completed the first phase of a multimillion-dollar renovation. All of the resort’s 296 rooms have been updated with amenities focused around a theme that highlights the resort’s location in Loudoun County and the county’s growing wine industry.
For instance, there are “wine cask” nightstands, drinking glasses made from recycled wine bottles and artwork shown in frames made from wine corks. Loudoun is home to more than 45 wineries and 20 craft breweries (many of which are within 30 minutes of the resort).
Lansdowne is located 25 miles away from Washington, D.C., and 8 miles from Washington Dulles International Airport. It includes a 12,000-square-foot spa and 45-hole golf course on 476 acres along the banks of the Potomac River.
The upgrades are part of the resort’s 25th anniversary.
Richmond-based Capital Square 1031 LLC said Monday that Seth Harris, a commercial real estate veteran with more than a decade of experience, has joined the firm as executive vice president of investments.
According to Capital Square, Harris has a successful track record of closing more than $3 billion in acquisition, finance and refinance transactions.
Harris joins the company from Landmark Apartment Trust, where he spent 11 years, ultimately as vice president of financial services. During his tenure, he completed about $1.3 billion in multifamily refinance and disposition transactions, purchased 56 multifamily properties and closed $900 million in multifamily financing from agencies, banks, insurance companies and CMBS lenders.
Harris earned a bachelor’s degree in economics and a master’s degree in real estate with a concentration in finance and investment from New York University.
Capital Square 1031 specializes in the creation and management of commercial real estate investment programs for Section 1031 exchange investors and other investors using the Delaware Statutory Trust structure. As of Jan. 31, the company said it oversees a national portfolio of 40 real estate assets valued at approximately $375 million.
Seven-foot, four-inch door frames to accommodate basketball players are only one of the amenities that helped sell the home of former VCU head basketball coach Shaka Smart in Richmond’s popular Fan district.
The 4,895-square foot, brick Colonial Revival home at 2701 Park Ave. fetched $1.26 million earlier this year, a little below the listed price of $1.4 million.
“It’s a spectacular house,” says Bill Gallasch, who along with his wife, Ceci Amrhein-Gallasch, served as the listing agents for the sale. The couple works for Joyner Fine Properties in Richmond.
“All of the door frames were raised — they’re normally six-foot, eight-inches — to accommodate the basketball players that would hang out there,” says Gallasch. The affect was dramatic. “It opened things up, made the ceilings seem taller.”
Maya and Shaka Smart renovated the 98-year home before he became head basketball coach at the University of Texas last year. “It met all of today’s standards,” says Gallasch.
The couple knocked out a wall to open up the kitchen and converted a double-car garage into a first-floor laundry and powder room.
Upgrading the home’s Wi-Fi capability was another project. “They could do everything from their phone,” says Gallasch. “One of the neat things they had was a TV in the wall, and when it was turned off it became a mirror. That stayed with the house.”
The three-story brick home, with a slate roof, has six bedrooms, four baths, and a basement with a recreation room and wine cellar. Gallasch says one of the Smarts’ favorite places to relax was the back of the house, which sports two Charleston-style open porches with awnings.
The new owners are a couple from Hanover County who moved to the Fan to enjoy the amenities of city living and to be close to their grandchildren.
Take an iconic travel slogan in a state blessed with natural beauty and history, increase funding for marketing and infrastructure, and what do you get?
A second-to-none tourism industry.
That’s the industry’s goal. But are we there yet? Not quite. While Virginia is competitive, it hasn’t ascended to the top of the Ferris wheel, say industry executives. Nor is it a tiny teacup player. What holds Virginia back, they say, are several challenges: outdated product, the need for improved infrastructure such as sports arenas and convention centers, and more marketing funds to make a push into affluent Northeastern markets such as Boston and New York.
By many measures, Virginia’s tourism industry is thriving. In 2014, domestic travelers spent $22.4 billion on lodging, transportation, food and recreation, supporting 216,900 jobs and generating $1.5 billion in state and local taxes.
In fact, Virginia ranks ninth among the 50 states and Washington, D.C., in domestic traveler spending. Yet the state falls to No. 21 based on its 2014 state budget of $18.6 million for tourism. That figure pales when compared with heavy-hitting tourism states such as Florida and California that spent nearly four times as much — $69.4 million and $64.4 million in 2014 — according to the U. S. Travel Association.
The Old Dominion is home to many large hospitality companies. Hilton Worldwide Inc. in McLean is a global giant with holdings in 100 countries. It, along with other players such as Apple REIT Hospitality, Shamin Hotels and Cornerstone Hospitality, are investing in new properties in Virginia.
Sparking the growth is the rise of millennial travelers and their families, an increasing recognition of Virginia’s award-winning culinary scene and a heightened focus on authentic experiences — from feasting on Virginia’s homegrown oysters to cycling from Richmond to Washington, D.C.
With the potential for new growth, though, are operational pressures. The industry struggles to find enough skilled people to staff positions. It’s the target of cyber criminals intent on hacking the hotels’ large cache of personal credit-card data. Throw in increased competition from Airbnb and other players in the short-term online rental industry, and it becomes apparent that the industry behind those carefree vacation images is anything but carefree.
“It’s not fun and games,” says Mark Carrier, president of B.F. Saul Hospitality Group in Northern Virginia and the 2015 vice chairman of the American Hotel and Lodging Association. The AHLA is a national association representing the 1.8 million-employee U.S. lodging industry. In Virginia that includes 1,495 properties and 45,092 lodging jobs.
“It’s a real business with a real return on investment that benefits the community. Things like the governor’s focus on Dulles Airport is huge when you think of that as a massive piece of public infrastructure and the need to get more passenger traffic through.’’ Carrier was referring to the $50 million in the state’s recently passed biennial budget that’s earmarked for the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, which manages Dulles. The idea behind the money is to cut fees charged to airlines to make Dulles more competitive, driving up domestic traveler traffic.
That’s the kind of public support, say industry insiders, that will help Virginia take tourism to the next level. During a recent gathering of C-suite executives for a roundtable discussion on Virginia’s tourism and hospitality industry at the Salamander Resort & Spa in Middleburg (see story and transcript), the overall mood was optimistic.
Ian Carter, president of global development, architecture, design and construction for Hilton, has served on state tourism boards in Florida and California. “As a general statement, I would say, yes, we’re pretty competitive.’’
Virginia is a diverse state, he notes. “We’re close to D.C. on the edge of the northern part of the state. We’ve got beaches. We’ve got resorts.”
Hilton gauges the health of the state by looking at the performance of its inventory in Virginia. “In our case, we’ve got close to 22,000 rooms in operation in the state,” says Carter. “We’ve got a pipeline of just under 4,000 rooms, meaning hotels that are going to open in the next two years. More than half of those are under construction. We see good representation of our brands and others.”
Another good sign for Virginia? Hotel occupancy rates are on the rise. They averaged 61.6 percent in 2015, compared with 59.7 percent in 2014, according to STR Inc., a hotel market data company. Meanwhile, the average daily rate per room (ADR) increased from $99.93 to $103.96.
Government’s double-edged sword
When it comes to room-rate revenue, Virginia — the No. 1 state for U S. defense expenditures with $54.7 billion spent here in 2014 — is hurt by federal lodging per-diem rates, says Eric Terry, president of the Virginia Restaurant, Lodging & Travel Association.
Terry grew up in Virginia and returned in 2014 after working for years in the Texas hospitality industry. He fingers the government’s reimbursement rate as “just a killer” for Virginia’s hospitality markets. The national standard rate for 2016 is $89 per night.
Reimbursement is based on location of government work activities, so the rate varies across the commonwealth. It is influenced by things such as seasonality and an area’s average daily rates. In May, per-diem rates ranged from $96 in Williamsburg, up from $89 in February, to $121 in Richmond and $226 in Northern Virginia.
“The military in this state has competed with the hotel industry by building large hotels on base, for instance at Fort Lee in Petersburg and at Langley. And now the Department of Defense is negotiating even lower, below-the-standard per-diem rates. It’s a huge concern for us. That’s our biggest impediment to new development in the state,” he said during an interview with Virginia Business.
The location of some of Virginia’s resorts is another challenge, according to Doug Henkel, who leads CBRE’s MidSouth hotel brokerage practice in Norfolk. “They’re not all well located or have ease of access. Look at Kingsmill in Williamsburg as an example. It’s 45 minutes from two airports and two hours from Washington. D.C. You have to have a reason to be there. The same is true for the resorts in the western part of the state,” he says. “… I think Virginia could do a better job of marketing its resorts.”
More and longer visitor stays would help raise room revenue. Rita McClenny, president and CEO of the Virginia Tourism Corp., says her agency is trying to increase the average length of stay for domestic visitors, which currently is about three days.
To do that, Virginia markets a diversity of attractions: history, food, wine and craft beer, the arts, sports and outdoor recreation. “We haven’t forgotten about boomers, but the millennial really is the focus,” says McClenny, “because it’s the 80-million-person market with young families who we want to create legacies and traditions for them to continue to come to Virginia.”
If more marketing dollars become available, McClenny has a wish list. “We desperately want to get to Boston and New York. We just don’t have the financial resources to be in that marketplace.” Instead, she explains, the state’s buy “is 99 percent digital for getting ‘Virginia is For Lover’s’ in the marketplace. ”
With a steady uptick in the amount of domestic travel expenditures in Virginia every year since 2009, hospitality companies are trying to tap into the growth with new product. New hotels and brands are going up across Virginia. For instance, downtown Norfolk looks forward to next year’s opening of a new 300-room hotel and conference center, Norfolk Hilton The Main, which will make the city more competitive as a convention and meeting destination.
Updated product Apple REIT Hospitality, based in Richmond, has a portfolio of nearly 200 hotels in 32 states. It recently completed two adjoining hotels in Richmond’s Shockoe Slip: a 135-room Courtyard by Marriott and a 75-suite Residence Inn by Marriott for extended stays.
“Richmond, Va. is a good example of a market that we would like to invest in,” says Krissy Gathright, the company’s executive vice president and COO. “There’s diverse demand generators. You have government, you have universities, you have medical, you have a stable corporate base, and you have amazing opportunities for leisure with the river, the culinary experiences … ’’
Gathright added that she’d like to see an upgraded Richmond Coliseum, something like the modern John Paul Jones arena in Charlottesville. Currently, the city’s aging Coliseum is located near Apple REIT’s downtown Marriott.
The 45-year-old, dome-shaped facility is so outdated that Terry says he got this reaction from an out-of-town visitor. “I was standing beside it with a person who does trade shows across the country and he pointed at it and said, ‘What is that?’ ”
Plans for a new sports/entertainment arena in Virginia Beach are encouraging, adds Terry. The privately financed, 18,000-seat venue will be built across from the Virginia Beach Convention Center, providing new space for sports and other events expected to draw more tourists.
In the pipeline
Another company with projects in the pipeline is Shamin Hotels, based in Chester. One of Central Virginia’s largest hotel operators, it plans to start construction this year on two new hotels in the suburban Short Pump corridor of Henrico County. It also recently invested more than $40 million to open two hotels in a former office tower in downtown Richmond: a 100-room Homewood Suites and a 144-room Hampton Inn & Suites (both Hilton brands). The properties have a ground-level restaurant, fitness center and a soon-to-open rooftop bar and restaurant that will offer commanding views of the James River and state Capitol.
“There is a lot of opportunity to put in some fresh, new product that really caters to the emerging trends in our industry. One of the things that we’re focused on is the millennials,” says Neil Amin, Shamin’s CEO. “Guests previously cared about consistency, and now they care about experience, and I think that trend is here to stay. I think the millennial generation brought that trend to us … They want that unique experience whenever they travel.”
Boutique lifestyle hotels Which sets up the perfect segue to one of the biggest trends in the hospitality industry: the rise of the upscale, boutique lifestyle hotel. Kimberly Christner, president and CEO of Cornerstone Hospitality in Williamsburg, heads a company that is developing small boutique properties throughout Virginia.
One of its projects is the Craddock Terry Hotel on the waterfront in downtown Lynchburg. The historic hook is that the building used to be a shoe factory. Cornerstone took that story and ran with it, serving the hotel’s continental breakfast in an old-fashioned, wooden shoeshine box and labeling its rooms with shoe-shaped signs.
The result has been a rousing success. The 44-room hotel, which opened in 2007, will soon add 56 more rooms and a rooftop venue with banquet space and bar and restaurant service. Christner likes to point out that the Craddock Terry, one of the first historic reuse projects in Lynchburg, sparked other downtown redevelopment.
Cornerstone also operates the Bolling Wilson Hotel in Wytheville, and it’s developing the Sessions Hotel in Bristol. “We have about eight hotels that will open in 2017 and 2018 that are all boutiques in Virginia, and we’re excited about that,” Christner says.
Typically, the hotels have 30 to 120 rooms. “These projects really are where I think the trend is going,” says Christner, “which is why Hilton and Marriott and Starwood — big companies — are trying to pick off those little independent properties, because they know that you can’t create that in a brand necessarily.”
Traditional financing does not work for these adaptive reuse projects. Christner says her company relies on state and federal historic tax credits, grants and low-interest loan programs to help pay for renovations.
One new welcome form of support is the Virginia Tourism Growth Fund. Cornerstone Hospitality and its partners received the first grant of $250,000 for their Western Front Hotel project in St. Paul, a town of about 1,000 in Southwest Virginia. The matching grant fund began this year to help spur new projects that enhance tourism.
The $7.2 million, 37-room hotel, scheduled to open in spring 2017, will create 13 full-time and 20 part-time jobs. It’s expected to host visitors who come to visit Spearhead Trails, an area with more than 100 miles of trails. “Growing our tourism industry is an essential strategy for diversifying and building a new Virginia economy,” Gov. Terry McAuliffe said in announcing the grant in February.
Another luxury boutique hotel, the 74-room Quirk Hotel in Richmond, has drawn rave reviews for its authentic feel and adjoining art gallery. It opened last September in the city’s arts district in a renovated, 100-year-old Italian Renaissance building that used to house a dry-goods department store.
Luxury resorts At the high end of the spectrum are full-scale resorts like the Salamander Resort & Spa in Middleburg. Opened in 2013, it was Virginia’s first new major resort in years. Today, the 340-acre, equestrian-themed resort, located an hour away from Washington, D.C., and 35 minutes from the international gateway of Washington Dulles International Airport, attracts leisure and business travelers. They are drawn by Salamander’s well-heeled location in the heart of Virginia’s horse country and a wide range of amenities — from a luxury spa to an equestrian center and cooking studio.
Prem Devadas, president of Salmander Hotels & Resorts, says the resort’s business is 50 percent leisure and 50 percent group travel. “We really are drawing groups that are looking for a unique, excellent destination, so we’re vying with resorts on the West Coast, the East Coast, Florida and New England,” he says. Many of these groups have never come to Virginia before, he adds, “let alone Northern Virginia.”
Other group business comes from D.C., Maryland and Virginia, with corporate groups, including Hilton Worldwide and law firms, holding meetings and annual retreats at Salamander. “It’s been very exciting to be able to establish a destination,” says Devadas.
Another luxury property, the one-million-square-foot MGM National Harbor, in Prince George’s County, Md., is scheduled to open in the fourth quarter. Located off the banks of the Potomac River, National Harbor already is a tourist destination with a marina, carousel, 180-foot-high Capital Wheel, 150 shops, including a Tanger Outlet Center, and 30 restaurants.
The addition of a $1.3 billion destination resort and casino located just a short ride away from Northern Virginia across the Woodrow Wilson Bridge is expected to impact Virginia tourism and not necessarily in a good way. “I think they will capture some very large groups,” says McClenny.
MGM officials say they plan to deliver a fully appointed property along the lines of a Bellagio (a Las Vegas resort), with a 308-room luxury hotel, a spa, 3,000-seat theater, restaurants and meeting and convention space. “They’re adding a Vegas-style casino with shows and all that stuff. I’d love to think it’s not going to have too big an impact, and it might be more group than transient,” says B.F. Saul’s Carrier. “I do think it will create demand because there isn’t a Vegas-style casino around.’’
One problem may be transportation in terms of getting there, he added, since the Woodrow Wilson Bridge gets crowded with traffic, and there’s no train or Metro stop at National Harbor. The Metro bus system does service the project, and a stop is planned for the new casino resort.
Terry expects the resort to bring wage pressures, since he says casinos typically pay more than other hospitality properties. “From an employment point of view, it’s going to create some real problems for our hotels and stuff on this side of the bridge.” Plus, there’s the initial curiosity factor in a state that doesn’t allow casino gambling. “I think there’s going to be a long line of Virginians just going there to spend money and leave it in that state versus ours,” says Terry.
One nearby locality, Alexandria, is studying ways to respond to what is expected to be a new regional attraction. Located just across the river via water taxi, Alexandria already competes with National Harbor for restaurant and retail business. Yet, its city officials also envision collaborative opportunities such as international trade shows, job fairs and a waterfront performing arts program.
Not all group business wants a casino environment, says McClenny, who is optimistic that those groups will keep coming to Virginia. “They’re going to target a certain segment of the market, the groups and the singles, but other people with their families who are going for something else, they’re going to keep doing the something else.”
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Apple REIT Hospitality, based in Richmond, has a portfolio of nearly 200 hotels in 32 states. It recently completed two adjoining hotels in Richmond’s Shockoe Slip: a 135-room Courtyard by Marriott and a 75-suite Residence Inn by Marriott for extended stays.
Which sets up the perfect segue to one of the biggest trends in the hospitality industry: the rise of the upscale, boutique lifestyle hotel. Kimberly Christner, president and CEO of Cornerstone Hospitality in Williamsburg, heads a company that is developing small boutique properties throughout Virginia. 
At the high end of the spectrum are full-scale resorts like the Salamander Resort & Spa in Middleburg. Opened in 2013, it was Virginia’s first new major resort in years. Today, the 340-acre, equestrian-themed resort, located an hour away from Washington, D.C., and 35 minutes from the international gateway of Washington Dulles International Airport, attracts leisure and business travelers. They are drawn by Salamander’s well-heeled location in the heart of Virginia’s horse country and a wide range of amenities — from a luxury spa to an equestrian center and cooking studio. 
MGM officials say they plan to deliver a fully appointed property along the lines of a Bellagio (a Las Vegas resort), with a 308-room luxury hotel, a spa, 3,000-seat theater, restaurants and meeting and convention space. “They’re adding a Vegas-style casino with shows and all that stuff. I’d love to think it’s not going to have too big an impact, and it might be more group than transient,” says B.F. Saul’s Carrier. “I do think it will create demand because there isn’t a Vegas-style casino around.’’