Rogers Lands Arkansas’ First W Aloft Hotel

Arkansas is about to get its first Aloft hotel. The five-story, $12 million building will be on a hill caddy-corner from the other Starwood hotel planned for Rogers, a 22-story Westin.

Developers Whitt Properties LLC of Fort Smith — which includes partners Storm Nolan, Chris Whitt and Kayne Whitt — hope to begin construction within five months and have the 136-room Aloft hotel completed a year later.

Aloft is a new concept hotel for Starwood. About 30 Aloft hotels are currently in development, but not one has opened yet. They have been dubbed “W lite” because they are a smaller version of Starwood’s W hotels.

“It’s a very trendy, hip product that didn’t exist [before],” Nolan said, indicating Aloft hotels will fill a niche in the market by appealing to young urban professionals.

The Aloft hotel will be built at MetroPark, the 30 acre tract under development by Haynes Ltd. along Interstate 540 from New Hope Road almost to Walnut Street.

The area around the New Hope Road/I-540 interchange is starting to look like a city unto itself. If everything goes according to plan, that part of Rogers will have 1,068 hotel rooms two years from now.

The Pinnacle Hills area is already home to John Q. Hammons’ 248-room Embassy Suites, which was completed in 2003 and grossed $8 million in room revenue last year as Northwest Arkansas’ leading hotel. Hammons is working on an addition to the Embassy Suites that will add 152 rooms next year.

Brandon Barber plans to build the $100 million, 325-room Westin on the east side of I-540, and two smaller hotels are planned just south of MetroPark — a six-story, 130-room Holiday Inn and a four-story, 80-room Staybridge Suites.

The Aloft will be more affordable than the Westin, with rack rates between $125 and $200 a night, Nolan said.

Whitt Properties has 2.5 acres under contract with Haynes Ltd. for the site, but Nolan wouldn’t reveal the purchase price for the real estate.

“It’s a fresh concept tailored for now,” Hunter Haynes of Haynes Ltd. said of the hip Aloft hotel. “Starwood has approved the site. They’re doing their layouts with engineers to see how the building could sit on the site, and doing their final due diligence.”

The Aloft would be near 52nd Street, a five-lane street Haynes Ltd. is building through the MetroPark development, at a cost of about $1.9 million for the company, Collins Haynes said.

The hotel construction hinges on approval from the Rogers Planning Commission, of course, and plans have yet to be submitted.

Whitt Properties

Nolan said Whitt Properties will soon have more than 700 hotel rooms in the Northwest Arkansas market.

The company already has a four-story, 121-room Value Place hotel in Bentonville that opened in June 2005.

Whitt Properties plans to open two more Value Place hotels of that size in Washington County — one in Fayetteville and one in Springdale.

Whitt Properties is also building a four-story, 115-room Comfort Suites in Bentonville that it plans to open by Sept. 1.

Whitt Properties got into the hotel business in 2003 when the company spent $10 million to buy and renovate a 10-story Masters Inn in downtown Little Rock. It reopened as the Comfort Inn & Suites Downtown.

Whitt Properties also has a Value Place hotel in Little Rock.

Nolan said Whitt Properties will soon open a Value Place hotel in Memphis and is considering other hotel development in that city as well as in Reno, Nev.

Whitt Properties also developed the 50-acre Cottonwood Village in Bentonville, which included retail buildings and two apartment complexes.

Hip and Urban

In a press release last year, Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc. said the new Aloft hotels would transform an “outdated hotel business segment.” The Aloft concept is part of Starwood’s W Hotels division.

“The aloft brand will bring this tired, stagnant travel segment to new heights,” the press release stated.

“We are building on our success and lessons learned from W and reinventing the category,” Steven J. Heyer, Starwood’s CEO said in the press release. “Aloft will offer travelers a radical departure and a welcome, refreshing alternative to what’s currently out there. We intend to deliver great style, design and functionality, all at an affordable room rate, with a high comfort quotient.”

(Starwood lowercases the “a” in Aloft, but we didn’t because it goes against the rules of English usage that we were taught in grade school.)

The Aloft hotels brand will revamp the “staid same-old, polyester scenario with stylish accommodations for business and leisure travelers,” the release stated.

The guest rooms in Aloft hotels have nine-foot ceilings and oversized windows, making the rooms seem like loft apartments.

The rooms will be equipped with a workspace, an MP3 docking station and a flat-panel television. The bathrooms will feature oversized walk-in showers.

Aloft hotels are designed with public spaces “to draw guests from their rooms with a number of super social offerings,” the release stated. Each Aloft will have a bar called Relax and an open-air space “out back” where guests can socialize or gather for light meals.

Aloft hotels will feature a shop with snacks and drinks, a fitness center, swimming pool, meeting space and wireless Internet throughout the hotel.

Starwood has about 750 properties in more than 80 countries. The company has more than 120,000 employees.

Starwood is the owner, operator and franchisor of the following hotels and resorts: St. Regis, The Luxury Collection, Sheraton, Westin, Four Points by Sheraton and W Hotels and Resorts.