Developer of "boutique" hotel planned for Brevard has an impressive track record in Alabama

His work to build a lodge and make other improvements at Alabama's Gulf State Park has drawn praise from state leaders and even early critics of the project.

The lodge at Alabama’s Gulf State Park. (Photo Courtesy of Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources.)

By Dan DeWitt

NewsBeat Writer

BREVARD — Tye Warren, who plans to build an 80-room hotel at the eastern “gateway” to the center of Brevard, has told City Council that “he wants this to be a quality project,” said Mayor Jimmy Harris.

Warren sees the hotel, one of the most prominent and expensive downtown developments in recent memory, as a “legacy for him,” Harris said.

But to convince city leaders he can pull off such an ambitious plan, he cited another, even more ambitious job that he also called “a legacy project’’ — the acclaimed $140 million enhancement of Alabama’s Gulf State Park. Warren directed the work, the centerpiece of which is a 350-room, Hilton-branded lodge, as an employee of the University of Alabama, where he will remain on staff until the end of June.

Despite its smaller size and urban surroundings, the Brevard hotel presents a similar challenge as the lodge did — fitting new, upscale hospitality into a highly visible, highly valued landscape.

In Alabama, even an early critic of the project said the results have been “spectacular.”

Casi Callaway, executive director of Mobile Baykeeper, was one of many environmentalists who opposed funding the lodge with settlement money from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

But last week she called it “a beautiful project . . . (and) the best thing that’s ever been built in Alabama from an environmental standpoint.”

The controversy

She and Cynthia Sarthou, executive director of Healthy Gulf (then Gulf Restoration Network), said their groups had a hand in making that happen.

Because the oil spill money was compensation for damage to natural areas, it should either benefit those areas or increase public access to them, they argued. Neither of those goals would be accomplished by building an upscale lodge with room prices out of reach of the average state resident, said Sarthou, whose group sued to stop the use of $56 million in recovery funds on the building.

The state’s environmentally responsible design either responded to or anticipated those arguments, and the lawsuit’s settlement required increased public access, including a free parking lot and shuttle to the beach.

“They did a good job, but it took pressure,” Sarthou said.

Not really, said Ed Poolos, deputy commissioner of the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, which oversees state parks. Designers always intended the lodge — a replacement of a rustic predecessor destroyed by a 2004 hurricane — to fit in harmoniously with its surroundings, he said.

“The lawsuit finalized some things that were done in a certain way, but the design was in place and a long way down the line before the suit was filed,” he said.

The “gold” standard

Either way, people on both sides of the argument agree that the building and other improvements at the 6,150-acre park ultimately became, as Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey said at its November 2018 ribbon-cutting, “an international benchmark for environmental and economic sustainability.”

Besides the lodge, the work included an interpretive center, expansion of cycling and walking trails, a learning campus and pedestrian bridges.

The restoration of ecologically vital sand dunes helped earn the project a Platinum SITES certification from a green landscaping group. Water at the interpretive center comes from collected rainfall and its energy from solar panels. 

The lodge’s low, “linear” contours echo those of the shoreline, said Sara Johnson, director of the Share the Beach sea turtle protection organization, and its subdued and tinted lighting averts a common hazard of shoreline development — driving turtles away from nesting sites.

The lodge was the first hotel in the world built to an insurance industry group’s Fortified Commercial standards, which allowed it to sustain only “very minimal damage” from last year’s Hurricane Sally, Poolos said. It also received a LEED Gold certification for energy efficiency.

“You know how many Alabama state buildings are Gold?” Callaway asked rhetorically. “Probably zero. Or, now, one. Alabama has just not done it.”

It has achieved its aim of boosting the local economy, despite — or, actually, because of — its low impact on the natural surroundings, said Beth Gendler, chief operating officer of Gulf Shores and Orange Beach Tourism.

Like an ordinary large hotel, she said, it increased bed-tax revenue and, by providing additional meeting space and room capacity, expanded the region’s ability to host large gatherings.

But she added that the economy of shoreline Alabama, “probably just like yours, in the mountains,” is geared towards promoting ecotourism. The lodge and other improvements, she said, “definitely enhance that message because we have a project that is sustainably built, that reuses rainwater and has only native plants. You won’t see a palm tree at the lodge at the state park because they are not indigenous to our area.”

What you will see, upon entering the lobby, is an expansive view of its natural surroundings. “When you’re in that hotel you feel like you are part of the beach,” Gendler said. “It’s a really beautiful building.”

The deal so far

Like the environmental groups, the city of Brevard is in a strong negotiating position, said City Manager Jim Fatland. That’s because it had no plans to sell.

The city bought the 2.9-acre tract on North Broad Street in August of last year for $1.88 million to use for expanded parking or a new county courthouse. A representative for Warren approached the city less than four months later seeking to buy the property.

Not that the ensuing negotiations required arm-twisting, Fatland said.

Warren readily agreed to the city’s price, $2.45 million, and inclusion into downtown’s Heart of Brevard taxing district. He also either offered or assented to conditions that include a $15 minimum wage for all hotel employees, publicly accessible park space on the hotel grounds, and parking for staff and guests. The city is also off the hook for “water or sewer or stormwater upgrades,” Fatland said. “He’ll pay for those himself, along with any streetscape improvements.”

With an estimated $30 million price tag, the project would bring in $153,000 per year in city property taxes, as well as bed and sales tax revenue, and downtown-enhancement funds through Heart of Brevard.

Had the city sought out a developer, Fatland said, it would have paid the cost of a recruitment firm, the realtor’s fees, which Warren will cover, and, likely, tax breaks that are often requested by in-demand developers.

“He didn’t ask for that at all,” Fatland said.

Future issues

The hotel plan has broad backing from the business community, including the Transylvania Economic Alliance, which sent the city a letter calling the project “capable of not only embracing but enhancing our vibrant natural advantages.”

Morris Young Jr., on the other hand, wrote the city worrying about how his existing runoff problems will be impacted by a building “set literally at my front door.”

“More tax revenue for the city,” his email concluded, “more problems for the neighborhood.”

He was one of several residents who sent comments when the council met last month and voted to sell the property.

Among the concerns of these and other residents: the building’s height and lighting; the loss of a potential space for parking or a downtown courthouse; the devotion of a prime piece of buildable land — in a county where such lots are in short supply — to accommodate visitors rather than cut into the desperate need for workforce housing.

Some of these issues have already been at least partly addressed.

Building height is capped at 50 feet because that is the limit of the Brevard Fire Department’s ladder truck, city Planning Director Paul Ray wrote in an email, and “lighting must be dark-sky compliant, so there is little to no flexibility in that area.”

The highly visible site is a less-than-ideal spot for a parking deck, Council Member Maureen Copolof said at the meeting. Fatland added that the $622,500 in proceeds from the sale will help finance a parking plan the city is developing and some of the tax revenue can be earmarked for affordable housing, a concern raised by council members Geraldine Dinkins and Maurice Jones.

And though the county has not shelved plans for a new or expanded courthouse, said County Commission David Guice, a study of potential sites did not give the hotel property a top ranking and neither he nor other county leaders have objected to the sale.

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Site of the planned hotel on North Broad Street.

Fitting into the city

Other questions the project faces speak to the difference between the job of building the lodge and the hotel, Ray said.

The Hilton in Alabama is surrounded by open space and features built as part of the same project. The Brevard hotel will follow a growing trend in hotels built in already developed, urban environments, Ray said, and forwarded a 2017 article in Lodging Magazine that explains the concept.

These “urban resorts,” as the article calls them, seek to blend into the surrounding community, tapping into and marketing its best features.

The developers work to tailor the atmosphere of the hotel to match that of the town and region, to allow guests to “seamlessly move between the hotel property” and nearby businesses and parks, and to welcome residents onto the property with, for example, a locally themed, destination restaurant.

The city’s job includes ensuring the nuts and bolts are taken care of, blending the facility with existing utilities, roads and sidewalks.

The first step is “Neighborhood Compatibility Meeting” tentatively scheduled for March 18, Ray said.

The next, longer step, will be layering a conditional zoning permit over the existing Downtown Mixed Use designation. The process is designed to allow more detailed discussion of and flexible terms for “exceptional” projects, said Ray, who has recommended a path that would allow the council approval power over both preliminary and final plans.

While voting for the sale last month, Dinkins reminded the council of the hotel’s potential impact on the city’s infrastructure and character, and urged firmness in these negotiations.

“We need to be strong and have a backbone,” she said.

The grand vision

Warren provided few details of his plans, partly because they haven’t been formulated and partly because that’s the way he operates.

The offer to buy the property was submitted in the names of Delaware-registered limited liability companies, which do not require the naming of officers. Despite being a public employee directing a high-profile project, his name and contact information are all but invisible to Google.

He declined to name hotels and restaurants he had owned and operated in the private sector or whether, as he has told several council members, his family plans to move to Transylvania County.

He did explain his reasons for this privacy. Projects can be undermined by placing too much focus on one person. He felt burned by press coverage of previous projects, and he is in the “awkward” position of laying the groundwork for the next phase of his career while still being employed by the university.

He also talked about his concept for the hotel, the goal for which is not just fitting in, as the Lodging article advocated, but becoming “quintessential Brevard.”

“I’m not interested in it being a franchise hotel or some sort of commodity,” he said.

Affiliation with a chain, or “flag,”  carries the benefit of international marketing and reservations networks. Warren did not rule this out, but said  “my hope and expectation is that there will not be a flag and the owner (Warren) will operate it.”

“I want it to be something the community celebrates and feels part of and always feels welcome,” he said. “People coming from the outside want to sit next to someone who is from here and have a conversation about the best hiking trails.”

And he talked about the grander goals of his industry, which he sees not as a money-maker but as a potential force for good.

He called the project in Alabama “a legacy project that made the lives of a lot of people better.” 

He hopes to do the same here.

“The real objective of hospitality is to create joy and I think (the industry) at large has not done a great job at that,” he said.

“The vision of this project is to make sure we create joy for people.”