While Aloft was conceived as a new-construction brand, development is now opening to adaptive reuse of existing buildings—mostly offices and industrial sites—into the select service product. The first was the recent transformation of an 85-year-old railroad freight depot in downtown Dallas into an eight-story, 193-room property.

It took developers Hamilton Properties Corp. and Savas Holdings more than three years to complete the project, which marries the framework of an historic commercial building to the distinctive look and feel of the Aloft brand. The property, the fourth Aloft in the Dallas area, was developed with sustainability in mind, and the owners are pursuing LEED certification for the project.

Several other adaptive reuse Starwood project are in the works. A circa 1900 AT&T switching station in West Palm Beach, FL will become an Aloft and a former condo building in Biloxi, MS destroyed by Hurricane Katrina is being redeveloped as a Four Points by Sheraton.

Aloft is also becoming active overseas. The second property outside of North America (the other is in China) opened earlier this month in Abu Dhabi, UAE. Next year, openings are expected in Belgium, India and Thailand. Another property in the Middle East will open in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in 2011.

We recently chatted by phone with Brian McGuinness, Starwood’s senior vice president of specialty select brands, about the Dallas project and the company’s philosophies on adaptive reuse:

How were the developers in Dallas able to blend the old and new?

The juxtaposition of old world meets new world is very powerful there and really drives a great Aloft experience. They spent a fair amount of time in our laboratory in White Plains to understand the brand and take its sprit and vibe and turn the building into a wonderful urban space that’s hip and cool with great technology and a great social atmosphere. Yet they were able to keep the authenticity of the original brick building.


Why was the Dallas property important to the brand?

We look at Dallas as an opportunity to create best practices around adaptive reuse, and hopefully we can take that globally. In Europe, in particular, it’s extremely challenging to do new-builds in downtown areas. We also like the notion of reusing an existing structure rather than tearing down a building to develop a new-build property.

Was it of the brand’s development plan or was it opportunistic?

It was a bit opportunistic. Our goal may have been to go to 50 or 75 new builds and then go adaptive reuse, but we’re changing with the times and believe it’s a good opportunity for us as we go forward.

The stars aligned on this one. The facility is great and the developers are wonderful partners so it was an opportunity to get ahead of the game. While it came a little earlier than we expected, it challenged us to be on our game a little more quickly than we normally would have been.

Why is now the right time for Aloft to consider adaptive reuse?

We have nearly 40 hotels globally so we understand new builds very well. As we start to look to the future of the brand and continue to grow it, adaptive reuse will be critical for us, particularly as a way to get into downtown markets that are challenging in which to do new construction. Also, with our loft-like sensibility these urban buildings that were old warehouses or factories or other things lend themselves to adaptive reuse. They’re generally in cool parts of town, areas that have new bars, restaurants, clubs and theaters.

In an adaptive-reuse project such as this one and others going forward, what aspects of Aloft are considered sacred?

What we generally won’t compromise on are lots of natural light through large windows. We firmly believe in high ceilings in public spaces and guestrooms because high ceilings tend to give you a feeling the space is larger, and that’s important to us. Also, the ability to have opening, flowing circulation so parts of the public spaces aren’t sectioned off. We differentiate areas by ceiling planes and changing the elevation in the floor, e.g., a sunken living room. We don’t want to wall it off. We want open, free-flowing space to generate the cross functional vibe we get in our lobbies.

Are you considering conversions of other hotels into Alofts?

Not for this brand. Even with adaptive reuse, we’re pretty strict on what buildings we’ll use. There’s not a lot of compromise on it. We’re looking for large windows, lots of natural light, high ceilings, lots of free-flowing spaces, and frankly that doesn’t exist in the brands out there today. Conversion from one of those would be extremely difficult, and it’s not where we’re putting our energies.

Aloft is unique and difficult to copy and while we consider imitation the sincerest form of flattery, it’s important for us to be the market leader and let others try to catch up.