Kimpton Hotels opened its ninth D.C. area boutique hotel in Rosslyn on Thursday and announced that the region will soon be the company’s largest market, surpassing its home base of San Francisco.
The Hotel Palomar Arlington at Waterview marks the group’s first Arlington venture. Kimpton has seven hotels in the District and one in Old Town Alexandria.
Old Town will soon see two more Kimpton hotels — the Monaco, which will open in January, and a yet unnamed hotel that is under construction.
All told, the D.C. area will be home to 11 of Kimpton’s 41 hotels nationwide.
“Basically, the government’s not getting any smaller, and the whole East Coast is very vibrant right now,” Kimpton CEO Michael Depatie said. “This market has an undersupply of hotels, and we took advantage of the opportunity.”
The 154-room hotel is part of Arlington’s planned revitalization of Rosslyn, which sits in a prime location but is filled with dated buildings and few green spaces.
“From a tax-dollar perspective, hotels are jewels in the community,” Arlington County Board Chairman Paul Ferguson said at the hotel’s opening event, which drew various local leaders, including Rep. Jim Moran, D-Va.
The venture has been 14 years in the making — developer JBG began assembling the project in 1993, JBG managing partner Ken Finkelstein said.
The company knocked down existing buildings and built a 600,000-square-foot office building, which is now leased by the Corporate Executive Board, and an adjacent 400,000-square foot-building that houses the Hotel Palomar and 135 high-end residential units.
