City Camper Hotel Set to Move Forward as Part of Hilton Chain

An affiliation with the chain will help attract investment for the project near downtown Brevard, said a City Camper company official, who expects to receive final permitting for the work in October.

Rendering of planned exterior of City Camper hotel. Image provided by City Camper LLC

BREVARD — The company behind the highly anticipated but long-delayed City Camper hotel hopes to secure funding and move forward with construction after joining the international Hilton Hotels and Resorts hospitality chain.

Though Hilton will not invest in the 120-room hotel planned for North Broad Street near downtown Brevard, its name will help attract financial commitments from other sources needed to meet the increased cost of the project, said City Camper LLC President Alan O’Neal.

“It gives me that edge, that nod that says this is a valid project,” he said.

City Camper was imagined as an independent, “boutique” hotel that would celebrate the character of the city, said Tye Warren, the original face of the project, who promised in 2021 the completed hotel would be “quintessentially Brevard.”

Warren is no longer involved in the project, O’Neal said, but this vision has not changed and the arrangement with Hilton will allow City Camper to retain its distinctive qualities while benefiting from increased brand recognition.

The hotel will be part of Hilton’s Tapestry Collection, described on the company’s website as “a gathering of independent hotels, each with an original, vibrant personality.”

“This is what they call their ‘soft’ brand, which gives you a lot of flexibility on room types and room sizes and design,” O’Neal said.

The Hilton name will be secondary in the official title of the destination — City Camper Brevard, Tapestry Collection by Hilton — and in its signage, he said.

“There’s not going to be a big neon ‘H’ out there,” he said.

Beyond attracting investment, the affiliation with Hilton will allow City Camper to tap into the chain’s marketing and reservation system. It will also ensure that the hotel will be maintained to Hilton’s standards.

“You have to keep it up. You have to update your furniture, update your paint,” he said of these requirements, “so in a way it’s a protection for the city of Brevard.”

In an email to the city this week released to NewsBeat in response to a public records request, O’Neal wrote that Hilton had approved City Camper’s application to be included in the Tapestry Collection on June 20, and that the chain’s review of the hotel’s design would be expedited because his company had provided complete plans.

This “should allow us to complete the process in four months or less instead of the normal eight to 12 months,” he wrote. “My expectation would be that the revised plans and specifications will be completed by October . . . and ready to resubmit for permitting.”

Approval from the city should also be completed quickly, said Planning Director Paul Ray, as long as the plans have not changed dramatically.

Significant revisions to the project’s Final Master Plan, approved by the Brevard City Council in 2022, would require a second vote of approval, he said.

But “if they’ve tweaked this and they’ve tweaked that a little bit, it wouldn’t have to go back to Council,” he said.

The main changes to that plan were intended to cut costs, O’Neal said. The previously proposed free-standing restaurant and spa will not be part of the initial construction, he said, but there are plans to “phase in” the stand-alone restaurant later.

None of the revisions should clash with the requirements of the conditional zoning granted by the Council in 2021, he said. That includes plans to address lighting, building height and stormwater management, he said.

And the revised plan will allow even more publicly accessible green space, also part of the initial zoning, which required at least one parklike acre on the three-acre parcel.

The approved Master Plan included 1.47 acres of open space and the elimination of the spa will allow the expansion of that area, O’Neal said, and a publicly accessible restaurant that will initially be built inside the main hotel building will include expansive outdoor seating.

The plans also call for the retention of the landscaped, meandering pedestrian walkway/sidewalk on North Broad.

Overall, he said, the grounds will be “very communal, very open to the public . . . very welcoming.”

City Camper LLC bought the three parcels that make up the hotel site on North Broad and East Probart Street from Brevard in 2021 for $2.45 million, about $570,000 more than the city had paid for it a year earlier.

Though the hotel’s modern design was widely criticized when a rendering was posted on Facebook, several Council members have praised the project’s use of high-end materials in its construction and native plants in its extensive landscaping.

Work on the site began shortly after the Master Plan’s approval, but ground to a halt in late 2022 because of soaring prices for materials and labor, O’Neal said. “Costs were going nuts.”

The total price of the project, initially expected to be about $30 million, has risen to $43 million, O’Neal said.

The bare, unsightly future grounds of the hotel were blasted as a “mud hole” by one city resident last year. But even then, owners of nearby businesses said they backed the project, describing it as a potential boon for downtown commerce.

Completion of the project is especially important because the site is highly visible, said Burton Hodges, executive director the Transylvania Economic Alliance.

“It is very much a gateway property and it is critical to the visual landscape of downtown,” he said.

“I think it’s great news for the community to finally get that hotel built,” said Brevard Mayor Maureen Copelof.

It may be too early to celebrate, O’Neal said, adding that he must still secure adequate financing. 

“It’s not a done deal,” he said, but he is determined that it will be.

“I’m going to get this thing built come hell or high water,” he said.

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