Alpharetta, GA, a suburb of Atlanta, is home to the headquarters of owner/operator/developer Hotel Equities (HE). It is also the location of The Hamilton Alpharetta, Curio Collection by Hilton, a 119-key property that became the first boutique hotel in the city when it opened in the summer of 2021.
The property, which is HE’s only hotel in its hometown, was developed and originally owned by Alpharetta-based Mayfair Street Partners. Bryan DeCort, COO, HE, explained that his company came into the project “a little bit late” but is now the majority owner.
“At the time was our first project together,” said the COO. “The principals are local and well-known and have done significant work in a number of different asset classes, predominantly on the commercial side. We have since done a number of different projects with Mayfair, and we do a bunch of third-party management for them across a number of different brands and in a handful of different cities, predominantly in the Southeast and through a number of our other affiliate companies.”
The hotel is located in thriving downtown Alpharetta, an area, DeCort noted, has become a popular place to live, work and visit.
“Alpharetta has really been transformed in the last decade, but most notably in the last five years,” said DeCort. “And the development of Avalon, which is a massive, mixed-use development really started the transformation for Alpharetta. The city has always been attractive, predominantly because of the public school system, and that has absolutely assisted in and supported Alpharetta’s quest to quietly the Fintech capital of the south.”
He added, “Downtown Alpharetta, where The Hamilton hotel sits, is walkable, family-oriented and pet-friendly with really cool restaurant offerings and live music everywhere you go.”
The property was built on a sliver piece of property, according to DeCort, and it took several years for Mayfair to get it approved.
“The architecture has a very modern-day industrial flare. and there’s absolutely history in terms of where the Western & Atlantic railways intersected in that area, as Atlanta and the Southeast was sprawling and looking to create connectivity between the East and West coasts,” he said, adding, “The accommodations are incredibly high-end, and it has all the modern amenities that you would expect to get in a Curio soft-branded hotel. It has a vintage appeal to it and just really compliments what’s happening in downtown Alpharetta around it.”
Food and beverage features heavily on the property, with Carrie’s Conservatory and Fulton’s Public House, as well as Roaring Social, a basement speakeasy with “more than 9,000 sq. ft. of fun and entertainment,” DeCort offered. “We call it ‘eat-ertainment.'”
There’s also an open-air terrace for special events, which is a popular spot for weddings. “We also activate it heavily outside of what it’s normally being used for—catered and social events,” said DeCort. “We do some really cool stuff out there. We put on college football games on the weekends. We get live music and do a bunch of different series through our F&B offerings.”
So far, the hotel has performed very well by HE standards in the about one-and-a-half years since it opened.
“It has succeeded in every benchmark since we opened, including sitting in the top 10% of Curios from a service-orientation standpoint,” said DeCort. “it leads the market in RPIs, and has absolutely crushed it across all of the measurables. If you take a look at Tripadvisor, we’re now sitting in the top 10 if you take a look at the Curio brand rankings, particularly on the service and cleanliness side. You’re talking top 5% to 7% of the brand and exceeding brand averages in certain metrics by 20 to 25 points. So, we’ve got an exceptional GM—Amber Edwards—and leadership team there. The hotel gets a significant amount of attention, not only because we’re the owner/operator, but it also sits about two-and-a-half miles from our corporate headquarters. When we bring folks in for training, we often use that hotel as our showcase hotel, and our team just does an exceptional job showing that hotel off.”