[SAguy]

More info from SABJ:
By W. Scott Bailey
Senior Reporter, San Antonio Business Journal

Winston Hotels LLC is advancing its plan to redevelop Riverside Towers in downtown San Antonio into a pair of hotels — complete with a rooftop bar — despite the novel coronavirus pandemic and the crushing blow it’s delivered to the travel industry.

The Raleigh, North Carolina-based company, which bought the aging center city office building before the pandemic, is proceeding with the renovation and estimates it will put $45 million into the project.

It’s a hefty investment considering the suffering hotel operators have endured since March.

“Everything hospitality related has been flipped upside down over the past several months,” Watts Winston, vice president of Winston Hotels, told me. “There are two hotels that will be built out.”

Those hotels will have staggered openings.

The first, the AC Hotel by Marriott, which will be built on floors 13 through 20, is expected to open in late spring or early summer 2021. A rooftop bar, to be built on floors 14 and 15 on the shorter side of the structure, is set to open at the same time.

The Element Hotel by Westin, which will take floors seven through 12, is slated to open in spring 2022.

Winston Hotels was engaged in preliminary work at Riverside Towers before the pandemic. That fact may have spared the project from a significant delay or its potential demise.

“The general sentiment in the industry was that anybody who had yet to begin pumped the breaks to reevaluate,” Winston said. “We were very fortunate, to be honest, to be able to continue.”

The hotels will be near the new Frost Tower and a redeveloped San Pedro Creek — not too far from historic Market Square or the University of Texas at San Antonio’s expanding downtown campus.

But the project is underway at a time when the Alamo City has experienced a steep decline in convention and leisure business, which has led to temporary hotel closures and a long list of layoffs.

Proceeding with such projects in the current economic climate involves risk.

“It’s a pretty sizable gamble,” CBRE Hotels Senior Vice President Michael Yu said.

“Will some of our assumptions that we had six or seven months ago be the same? Absolutely not,” Winston said.

But the company is committed to the project and confident that demand will return.

Plus, it’s sold on San Antonio.

“We’ve always wanted to be in San Antonio. It’s a great city,” Winston said. “From that perspective, there are no concerns or hesitation on our on end.”