News Courtesy : Heron
The oldest theatre and entertainment venue in San Antonio is about to have an upgrade. The group that owns the downtown’s Aztec Theatre has a new vision for the upper office floors of the 96-year-old building.
Aztec Family Group LLC has a 40-year lease agreement with Dallas-based Shreem Capital, an investment firm that focuses on buying, developing and managing hotels, the daily reports. The plans focus on four floors of now-vacant office space at the live music and event venue, which will be renovated into 77 guest rooms and suites.
The planned 77-room hotel in the Aztec Theatre building will be part of the boutique Marriott Tribute brand, said Bhavin Patel, the founder and CEO of Irving-based Shreem Capital, which is in a joint venture on the project with locally-based Aztec Family Group.
This rendering shows the addition of a boutique hotel inside the Aztec Theater building, including a rooftop restaurant and bar. Courtesy Overland Architecture and Urban Design
Renovation work for the hotel, which will occupy the five upper stories of the seven-story building, is expected to begin around August, and the partners hope to open the hotel by the end of next year, Patel said.
The joint venture expects to begin construction this summer on a rooftop bar and restaurant. The hotel will include a “salt room,” a variation on a sauna. “It will be one of the highest-priced hotels on the River Walk because of the nature of the upscale experiences we’re going to have,” Patel said of the hotel. He expects it to compete on the level of the Hotel Emma, The St. Anthony and the adjacent Omni Mokara Hotel & Spa—three of the downtown area’s poshest hotels.
On May 8, the Aztec Family Group, led by local developer Sam Panchevre, sold the hotel portion of the Aztec building, 104 N. St. Mary’s St., including the rooftop restaurant area, to Shreem. It retains control of the theatre itself and the commercial space on the bottom floors.
The Marriott Tribute brand is targeted toward “colourful neighbourhoods” in “creative cities,” according to its website. Its locations tend to have unique names: In Texas, for example, there is the Austin Southpark Hotel in south Austin, the Magnolia Hotel Houston in downtown Houston, and The Tremont House in Galveston.
“It will be a very unique branding and design of the hotel which will really resonate with the ‘modern maverick’ kind of theme,” Patel said.
The upper floors of the Aztec, built in 1926, have been largely vacant for four decades, the group said when it applied for conceptual approval from the city’s Historic and Design Review Commission earlier this year.
“We’re very optimistic about the San Antonio River Walk market,” he said. “Post-pandemic, we’ve seen a drastic rise in leisure travel all across the country, and especially in San Antonio, with it being a top leisure destination. In connection to that, there’s a huge demand for unique boutique hotels.”
