Apr. 30--In just over a month's time, downtown Buffalo is seeing the debuts of two new hotels on Delaware Avenue, boosting the room count in the heart of the city by nearly 10 percent. 

The Mansion on Delaware Avenue, located at 414 Delaware Ave., opened its doors on April 13 following $2 million in renovations to turn the historic Victor Hugo building into a 28-room luxury hotel. In mid-May, the new $7 million Hampton Inn & Suites will start welcoming guests to its 138 rooms at the corner of Delaware Avenue and Chippewa Street. 

The openings cap a three-year blitz of hotel-related spending downtown that has included more than $41 million in new construction, expansion and updates. The addition of the Hampton and the Mansion, plus construction of The Pillars in 1998, adjacent to Roswell Park Cancer Institute, brings the downtown hotel room count to 1,678, up nearly 300 rooms in just three years. 

"Simply incredible," said Buffalo Mayor Anthony M. Masiello of the pace of downtown hotel improvements. 

"People are always talking about what downtown Buffalo isn't, and yet you look up the private sector money that's been poured into the hotels, along with what's happening on Chippewa Street and in the Theatre District, and you'll see quite a package," Masiello said. 

Those elements, he said, are combining to make downtown Buffalo the perfect weekend destination. 

"There's a great selection of hotels, lots of places to eat and play, shows to see and the waterfront all within walking distance. And it just keeps getting better," he said. 

The Hampton represents the first hotel project taken on by Buffalo's Benderson Development within city limits. The national retail development company has quietly created a hotel division, Buffalo Lodging Associates, which currently operates nine hotel properties in seven states, with 23 more in the design or construction phase. 

Scott Parker, Buffalo Lodging's vice president of operations, said the Benderson family's extensive experience in identifying key retail sites played a major role in selecting the Delaware Avenue and Chippewa Street location for the Hampton. 

"The company knew this spot had so much potential, that's why we went through so much -- imploding a building, gutting and rebuilding an existing structure -- to create a really unique downtown hotel," Parker said. 

While the Hampton name will ring a bell of recognition with travelers seeking a reliable, limited service hotel experience, Parker said what they'll find at the Delaware Avenue location is likely to exceed their expectations. 

"This is not your cookie-cutter Hampton. Everything here is a few notches above a typical Hampton, from the carpets, to the bathroom and light fixturing, to the grade of mattresses and pillows," he said. 

Because the new hotel started its life as an office building, room sizes (ranging from 625-square-feet, up to 1,500-square-feet), layouts and window configurations are far from uniform. As the project moved along, a laundry list of change orders brought even more special touches into the picture, including custom wood mouldings throughout the building, 27 rooms with fireplaces, another 28 with whirlpool tubs, inlaid Italian marble in its reception area, and high-speed computer hook-ups in every room. 

"The location deserved something beyond the expected. We wanted to be different, we wanted to be very competitive against the other fine downtown hotels," Parker said. 

Buffalo Lodging is also waging an aggressive campaign of preopening tours to spread the word about the property. By creating a buzz about the hotel, Parker and his staff expect to log a 78 percent occupancy rate at the building in its first year of operation. 

That is an aggressive booking goal based on statistics from Smith Travel Research, a Tennessee-based firm that compiles lodging industry data. Smith pegged the city's downtown occupancy rates at an average of 65.3 percent for 2000. 

"We believe the product we are able to offer -- the combination of location, the building, the staff -- will make this the place area businesses and residents will recommend to their friends, family and associates," Parker said. 

Rooms at the new Hampton will range from $109 per night for a standard room to $279 for the hotel's premium suites. 

Too much of a good thing? But not everyone is so upbeat about the additional of the Hampton to the downtown hotel landscape. David Hart, president of Buffalo-based Hart Hotels, which operates five area hotels, including the Holiday Inn at 620 Delaware Ave., questions the added strain the newcomers, particularly the Hampton, will put on existing lodging venues. 

"We're already oversupplied with downtown hotel rooms. So now you'll have a bigger fight over available guests," Hart said. 

He cited statistics from Smith Travel Research that show that on a yearly basis, some 250,000 downtown hotel beds lay unoccupied due to lack of guests. 

Hart has been very outspoken in recent years over the smorgasbord of tax breaks, low interest loans and other incentives that government agencies have handed out to hotel developers. Hart, who did not ask for aid to complete some $8.5 million in updates to four of his properties, has been highly critical of the nearly $600,000 in tax breaks provided to Buffalo's Benderson Development to build the $7 million Hampton. 

"Here's a prediction: A year from now, maybe less, all these hotels will be defaulting on their subsidies, or asking for additional breaks. And the rest will be defaulting on their mortgages and making late tax payments," Hart said. 

Pat Cosentino, who has operated the Radisson Suites at 601 Main St. for over a decade, is also concerned that the guest pie isn't large enough to support so many hotels. 

"Competition is good, it keeps everybody on their toes, but the market downtown isn't great to begin with," Cosentino said. "Looking into the future, I don't see the pie getting any bigger, so I'm a little worried." 

The Hampton will open minus an expected stable of first-floor retail shops and eateries. Rex Burgher, a Benderson leasing executive, said he's putting a full-court press on national retailers and restaurant operators to fill the high-profile, 18,000-square-foot space. 

"We see this as the perfect opportunity to bring retail back to downtown Buffalo," Burgher said. "We're talking about women's and men's apparel, footwear, cards and gifts, and great food. This building is an anchor at the corner of Delaware and Chippewa. We're taking it very seriously." 

A preliminary timetable calls for a portion of the space to be leased, built-out and open for business by the end of the year, with the remainder to follow in 2002. Depending on what tenants Benderson signs, the first floor retail corridor -- which will extend from the front of the building along Delaware Avenue, back along Chippewa Street, toward South Elmwood Avenue -- will house at least five, and as many as 10 businesses. 

A mansion revived While the Hampton has attracted a lot of attention due to its size, price tag and government assistance, The Mansion on Delaware Avenue, made a comparatively quiet debut on April 13. The brainchild of Dennis Murphy, president of Buffalo-based InnVest Lodging Services, the Mansion aims to attract the most discriminating of guests, as the area's only butler-serviced hotel property. 

"This is such a unique hotel, we think we can use it to attract people who would normally not stay in Buffalo," Murphy said. "We offer a one-of-a-kind lodging experience." 

Murphy, whose other properties include a stable of 14 Marriotts and a conference center, all outside the Buffalo area, eyeballed the vacant, faded former Victor Hugo's Wine Cellar at 414 Delaware Ave. and saw it as an opportunity to do something truly special. But while remnants of its glory days remained, including spectacular burled walnut and white oak woodwork, ornate pocket doors and detailed plaster mouldings and ceiling relief, turning the dilapidated building into his dream hotel took a lot more time and money than Murphy had ever imagined. 

Announced in 1997 as a one-year renovation effort, the complexities of dragging the 131-year-old former mansion into the 21st century, while retaining its architectural attributes, made that schedule unrealistic. The seemingly-stalled project saw a second timetable floated in 1999, when a spring 2000 opening seemed possible. But again, the goal of "doing it right" took precedence over a target opening date. 

"I've built 250 room hotels that took less time and worry than this. But I knew when we were done, no one would recall how long it took, they'd only recognize how beautiful it is," he said. 

Another unique aspect of the 28-room hotel is that many of its decorative elements were made by local artisans. The nickel-inlaid cherry beds and armoires that grace each room were fabricated by Amherst's Advantage Woodshop, and local artists produced every sculpture, oil painting and watercolor displayed throughout the building. 

Even the mattresses, custom-made by Lockport Mattress Co., add local flavor. 

Rooms are priced in three categories: Classics -- $145, Grands -- $165, and Suites -- $250. 

The specialty hotel also includes two ballrooms and ancillary meeting rooms for business groups and wedding parties seeking a venue with event space, as well as guest lodging. Indicative of its unusual niche was the decision of Ingram-Micro to book the entire building to house its executive board during its upcoming annual meeting in Buffalo. 

"We are able to give them the exact level of service they demand, from their rooms, to their meals, to the meeting space. No one else in Buffalo is set up to do this," said Geno Principe, manager of the Mansion. 

To date, prebookings are running 150 percent ahead of expectations, with a long list of weddings, meetings and individual guests planning stays over the next several months. 

As Principe oversees day-to-day operations, and works to get the last couple rooms ready for occupancy, he's also found himself playing tour guide on a regular basis. 

"People are so curious to see what we've done," he said. "At times it's tough to get any work done because there`s always someone coming in to look around. But the reception has been very gratifying." 

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(c) 2001, The Buffalo News, N.Y. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.