Crowne Plaza, Radisson Coming to Fayetteville

The two largest hotels in downtown Fayetteville are about to undergo major renovations.

About $12 million will be invested to turn the decrepit 135-year-old Mountain Inn into a Crowne Plaza Hotel, and $2 million is being spent on the renovation of the 20-year-old Hilton hotel, which will become a Radisson on Sept. 10.

Crowne Plaza

The seven-story, 60,000-SF, 108-room Mountain Inn at the corner of Mountain Street and College Avenue has seen better days.

Originally built in 1866 as the Mountain House, the building has undergone several incarnations. In the early 1900s, the hotel was known as the Oriental. In 1923, it was remodeled and expanded to include a dining room and coffee shop. It was expanded again in 1929, and office space was added on the first floor. In 1934, it also was used for the Washington County Hospital Nursing School.

From 1960 to 1980, the building was vacant. A Fayetteville investor, Joe Fred Starr, bought the building in 1980. A group of investors spent more than $1 million and two years restoring the building before reopening it as the Mountain Inn. The building functioned as a hotel until 1994 when it was involved in bankruptcy proceedings.

In the mid-1990s, the building was owned and occupied by Maharishi Vedic University of North Carolina. The organization used the building as a place to hold classes, which included meditation. But it vacated by 1998.

Stella Moga of Westlake, Ohio, purchased the Mountain Inn last year for $975,000, according to court records. Moga, a developer who owns a chain of daycare centers, also plans to buy the four-story, 12,316-SF Washington County Courts building on the north side of the Mountain Inn for about $600,000. The county currently owns that building, but the sale is scheduled to be completed by mid-September. The Crowne Plaza, a Six Continents hotel, will occupy both buildings.

Radisson

The 15-story, 235-room Hilton opened in 1981, just in time to house actors and crew for “The Blue and the Gray,” a television mini-series being filmed in Fayetteville. Gregory Peck and Stacy Keach stayed at the Hilton during the filming.

The Hilton, which brought in $3.9 million in revenue last year, operated for its first two decades under a franchise contract with Hilton Hotels Corp. of Beverly Hills, Calif., but that contract is about to expire.

Regency Hotel Management, which bought the Fayetteville hotel in 1992 from Square One Association Inc., has decided to change the Hilton to a Radisson.

It’s a natural evolution, said David McGeady, general manager of the hotel.

Regency already operates six Radissons in its portfolio of 65 hotels. The Fayetteville hotel was Regency’s only Hilton.

Regency already had planned to spend $2 million to renovate the building. Preliminary work began on the renovation in late August. McGeady said the renovation will continue through 2002.

The renovation will include new paint, wallpaper, carpeting and furniture for the rooms and much of the rest of the building. The lobby will be completely redone and the ballrooms recarpeted, McGeady said. He said the food and service will also be improved.

Hilton and Radisson hotels are similar in quality. The average room rate at the Hilton is $80, McGeady said.

The Hilton had a 10 percent dip in occupancy immediately after the Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport opened in Highfill in November 1998, McGeady said. The new airport is closer to the headquarters of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. in Bentonville, so people flying into the area to do business with Wal-Mart began staying in hotels in Benton County instead of flying into Fayetteville’s Drake Field and staying at the Hilton.

McGeady said there has been “some rebound” in occupancy, but the Hilton still hasn’t made up the 10 percent difference.