NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Poydras Properties LLC intends to convert seven floors of the 24-story 1250 Poydras building into a Hyatt-branded extended-stay hotel.
New Orleans CityBusiness reported (http://bit.ly/1o3FduT) Select Hotels Group LLC will operate the property, which is in the New Orleans business district near the Superdome.
Conveyance records indicate Poydras Properties executed a commercial lease agreement on Oct. 2 with Waypoint NOLA for a portion of the ground floor of 1250 Poydras and floors 11 through 17 for the hotel conversion project. The area amounts to about 134,000 square feet of space within the building.
Robert Hand, owner of Louisiana Commercial Realty, a broker in the deal, said the renovation budget for the project is $120 million.
Agents for Gulf States Real Estate Services of Covington also were involved in brokering the deal.
The New Orleans permits and licenses website shows Poydras Properties is in the process of applying for renovation permits for the project. A project description shows that the hotel would have a “sky lobby” on the 11th floor and guestrooms and suites on the remaining floors.
Hand said the development has been in the works for months, but there is no set timetable for completion of the work. Designs were done by HC Architecture of Atlanta and locally based Scairono Martinez Architects.
Hand said the project involves an extensive overhaul of the building to accommodate a hotel. He noted that much of the space had been vacant for several years.
The building has walkway access to the nearby Hyatt Regency Hotel and also uses its covered parking area. Hand said the new hotel will piggyback on the existing Hyatt property.
The project essentially combines a 57,000-square-foot block of vacant leasable space on floors 11 through 13 with the four floors above that energy company Eni Petroleum had been leasing. Hand said Eni had been looking for tenants to sublease the space since 2010 when the company left New Orleans for Houston.
Eni was paying about $18 per square foot in rent on roughly 75,000 square feet of space it was not using. The company’s lease wouldn’t have expired until 2018.
Poydras Properties has owned 1250 Poydras since 2001 and also owns the 28-story Entergy Building at 639 Loyola Ave.
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Information from: New Orleans CityBusiness, http://www.neworleanscitybusiness.com
