Sept. 01–HARTFORD — The new owners of Goodwin Square are in negotiations to reopen the complex’s long-shuttered hotel in the heart of downtown.
“We have plans to reopen the hotel,” Brian Kohn, a member of the partnership that purchased the hotel and office complex in late June, confirmed Tuesday. “We are working with some people right now.”
Kohn said the plans are at the earliest stages, and there is no timetable for when the 124-room hotel — joined by a common atrium with the 30-story office tower — might again open for guest bookings. The hotel closed in late 2008, with an announcement the night President Barack Obama was first lected.
Kohn declined to say how many operators are considering the hotel project or their identities.
The talks are happening at a time when the hotel business in the capital city has not fully recovered from the recession, and questions remain about the viability of an additional venue.
The partners that bought the Goodwin in June pledged to breathe new life into the complex, at 225 Asylum St., and have plans to update the atrium and common areas of the office tower. There were no specific plans for the hotel disclosed at the time of the closing of the sale.
City officials say they have been briefed by the Kohn brothers on their plans for the hotel, whose distinctive terra cotta facade was once part of an apartment building on the site. The facade, dating back 125 years to the city’s Victorian Gilded Age, was saved as part of the late 1980s construction of Goodwin Square.
“They came and visited us,” Thomas Deller, the city’s director of development, said. “They said they were analyzing the hotel and interviewing operators and heading in that direction.”
Another person familiar with the talks said the partners had talked with at least two “strong operators” who could step in and run a hotel. That person declined to be identified because he is not authorized to speak for the partners.
Kohn, an entrepreneur who has worked in numerous real estate and technology companies, and his brother Steve, an executive at New York real estate commerical real estate services firm Cushman & Wakefield, joined with Westport Capital Partners of Wilton to purchase Goodwin Square for $17.6 million in an online auction in June.
The new owners were among a half-dozen bidders for Goodwin Square that reached out to the Capital Region Development Authority about the availability of funding to convert the hotel rooms to apartments.
On Tuesday, Kohn declined to say directly if an apartment conversion could be a potential fallback position.
“Right now, it’s a hotel,” Kohn said. “Life could change, but that’s what the plans are now.”
Among the key considerations will be the city’s hotel occupany rate, which is typically heavier during the week because of business travel and lighter on the weekends.
In addition, there could be other competition.
The former, 96-room Holiday Inn Express near Union Station, now closed, is expected to reopen next year, and the developer of an 81-room Candlewood Suites just east of a new minor league ballpark has said construction would begin this summer.
In addition, hotels in downtown Hartford often compete for guests with surrounding towns such as East Hartford, Farmington and Windsor.
Even so, local officials said reopening the Goodwin would be a strong asset to the city — and a selling point for visitors.
“The hotel remains a great deal of historic charm which is important in selling a city,” H. Scott Phelps, president of the Connecticut Convention & Sports Bureau, said. “It was always a popular choice for meeting planners and attendees interested in boutique-style lodging. Moreover, its unique design expands the variety of different types of hotel properties in the Hartford area.”
