The Making of a Boutique Hotel

While deconstruction efforts signal a renewal of a 107-year-old downtown Springfield building, marketers are constructing its brand position.

Its name: Hotel Vandivort.

“Modern meets historical will be the tone of the place,” said Michael Stelzer, president of Marlin Co., the marketing firm hired to carry out the new owners’ vision of a boutique hotel in the former Vandivort Center, 305 E. Walnut St.

Larry Snyder & Co. construction crews have torn through the guts of the building in a multimillion-dollar renovation job for members of Springfield’s McQueary family. Through MBH LLC, siblings John and Billy McQueary in the fall purchased the five-story building to create a high-end, 50-room hotel expected to open in mid-2014.

“The owners want it to be the living room of downtown, which means it is a gathering place, a place where people can exchange ideas, relax, have a drink and do business,” Stelzer said, noting the Marlin team has established a logo and is developing signage and a website. “We like that.”

John McQueary said the partners are seeking to create a signature hotel for downtown.

“It just seemed that was something that was missing,” he said, adding the owners have no hotel experience, but he and his brother had been interested in downtown real estate before John’s wife, Karen, joined the team. She has worked with project architect Bates & Associates Inc. and Boulder, Colo.-based interior designers Studio R Interiors Inc.

The McQuearys, of the McQueary Drug Co. family, closed in September on the purchase of the building that had been listed by downtown property owner Scott Tillman for $1.5 million. The 44,000-square-foot former Masonic temple had served as the home to several small office tenants and the Springfield Contemporary Theatre following a 1987 renovation of the property.

The developers’ plans include a 10,800-square-foot, four-floor addition to the building’s back end, a first-floor bar with a social portion including space for two meeting rooms, as well as new elevators – a feature they say former tenants had remarked was necessary.

The McQuearys plan to have a total of three meeting spaces, including the fourth-floor Grande Ballroom, which had long been a place for wedding receptions with its 20-foot ceiling. A handful of rooms are designed with the spacious ceiling heights.

Karen McQueary said the Hotel Vandivort – now gutted of its former offices and Springfield Contemporary Theatre stage and balcony – would incorporate elements picked up from the partners’ travels to New York City boutiques the Wythe and Ace hotels.

“The Wythe, which is in Brooklyn, in Williamsburg, is a newly renovated hotel that is an old building like this with lots of exposed brick and is a unique sort of place,” McQueary said. “We definitely don’t have a formula to this. We are trying to create our own unique Springfield experience.

“We are not coming into this with an industry point of view, but with a consumer point of view, so we don’t have to obey the rules.”

According to Boutique & Lifestyle Lodging Association founder Frances Kiradjian, the McQuearys’ approach fits the style of her West Hills, Calif.-based organization’s members.

“Businesses in this sector are run differently, and in most cases, there’s no real guidebook for them to follow,” Kiradjian said.

Though it’s a relatively new concept, there are now more than 1,600 boutique hotels worldwide generating $5 billion in annual revenues, according to market researchers IBISWorld Inc. Industry revenues are expected to grow by 4 percent through 2017.

In just four years, Kiradjian’s association has amassed 600 members, including vendor and service firms.

According to research conducted for BLLA by hospitality educators at Purdue, New York and Hong Kong universities, boutique hotels are defined as “typically smaller hotels that offer high levels of service.” Generally designed with fewer than 100 rooms, they often provide authentic cultural or historic experiences, are independently owned and quite often provide social spaces such as living rooms or libraries.

Kiradjian said many bed-and-breakfast properties could fall within the definition of a boutique hotel, making estimates on the size of the industry hard to quantify.

She said boutiques appeal to a younger crowd wanting a unique lodging experience.

“The Millennials are not wanting to stay at the same hotels their parents stayed at. They want an experience. They don’t want cookie-cutter,” Kiradjian said.

Kiradjian also noted major hotel brands are capitalizing on the trend.

Marriot International Inc., for instance, promotes the boutique model through properties such as the Renaissance Las Vegas Hotel.

“I think it’s about going to a hotel and having a sense of where you are,” John McQueary said.

“For most brand hotels, you could be in Cincinnati or Milwaukee or L.A., and you wouldn’t know the difference. We want this to be definitively Springfield.”

Stelzer said Marlin Network, which has a client list that includes Unilever Food Solutions, Nestle and Starbucks, is likely to be a resource for future guests.

“We have a vested interest in downtown, and it’s important to our company that we have a place like the Hotel Vandivort to stay at where they can experience the culture of downtown. Also, with our visitors, when we have suppliers come to town, it’s really important to us that they have a good experience,” he said. “We think a boutique hotel coming to downtown is going to be good for business, and good for the community.”