by Joe Wilhelm Jr.
Staff Writer
A familiar name in the hotel industry helped provide some firsts for Jacksonville July 2 when it opened the doors to its latest concept on the Southbank.
Hilton combined its Garden Inn and Homewood Suites properties under one roof to maximize service to its customers and the Downtown property it is now located on. The land the hotels sit on is leased from the Jacksonville Transportation Authority and it was strategically developed near the Kings Avenue parking garage and Skyway station to create a “Transit Oriented Development” or TOD. The eight-story, 221-room project broke ground in October, 2007 and the final punch list items should be checked off in the next couple of weeks, according to General Manager Max Kiker.
“We are excited about the concept of combining the two hotels,” said Kiker. “It allows us to develop in urban areas where there isn’t a lot of available property and we can still offer our guests a choice. We can meet the needs of the road warrior or the person coming to Jacksonville for a job for six months. I expect to see more of this type of development in the future.”
JTA is also excited about further developing TOD properties.
“We went through the RFP (request for proposals) process and asked developers to give us their ideas of how we could develop the land and incorporate the transit into the design,” said Mike Miller, JTA spokesperson. “We hope it is one of many more transit oriented developments to come.
We are very excited.”
The concept is also making it easy on the sales staff for the two hotels.
“There is a need for our type of environment,” said Chris Hill, director of sales. “Companies are looking to save money and they have told us that they don’t need a bellman. They want their employees to take the trip and come home. While we may not offer the same amount of amenities as a full-service hotel, we offer the right amount of amenities that our customers are looking for.”
The combined design allows the hotels to keep their own identities — the Garden Inn offers mid-scale and Homewood Suites offers upscale extend stay accommodations. And, both hotels can utilize staff and meeting space.
“We do a lot of cross training so our staff can work in both hotels,” said Kiker. “If one side is slower than the other we can move the employees over and keep them on the schedule, rather than have to cut back.”
Guests of both hotels can also utilize 1,226 feet of flexible meeting space–the Ortega, San Marco North and San Marco South rooms, which are equipped to handle most presentation needs with projection and wide screen televisions along with wall-mounted connections to eliminate a collection of cords running along the floor.
Guests aren’t the only beneficiaries of the new hotels.
St. Augustine artist Suzanne Strock was selected to provide artwork throughout the hotels. Homewood Suites provides a complimentary grocery shopping service for its extended stay guests, who have everything they need to prepare a meal in their stocked kitchens.
The grocery lists get filled at area grocery stores like Publix in Riverside or Walmart on Phillips Highway. Hill is also considering services that would provide meals ready to cook like Matthew Medure’s “Take Away Gourmet” in San Marco.
JTA also benefits from the lease of about 300 parking spaces on the first floor of its Kings Avenue parking garage to the hotels.
The next step in development of the property will be an office/retail/restaurant property in the parking lot along side of the hotels, which will feature a similar architectural design. The date for the start of that project has not been set.
The one date the hotel is well aware of is Oct. 31, the date of the Florida-Georgia football game.
“Yes, we have already started taking reservations for the weekend of the Florida-Georgia game,” said Hill.
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