Staff photo by Mike Pare / Chattanooga businesswoman Marta Alder said at a community meeting this week that she would like to see the new Southside boutique hotel open in 2018.A planned $20 million boutique hotel downtown near the Chattanooga Choo Choo won a request to add a partial fifth floor on Thursday that's expected to help the project move ahead.
Chattanooga businesswoman Marta Alder sought approval from a city panel to put up an extra 4,000 square feet as she readies to bring back the long-vacant historic St. George Hotel on Market Street.
The added floor would hold a rooftop bar, a spa and bathrooms, she told the Chattanooga Form Based Code Committee. Plans also are to offer live rooftop music, though it likely will be acoustic and jazz lounge performances and not "loud bands," Alder said.
"I'm going to build a quality, first-class hotel," she said at a neighborhood meeting earlier in the week. "We have to make the neighborhood better. It's going through a renaissance now."
Alder bought the 92-year-old empty downtown building three years ago. She plans to keep the historic front portion of the structure, which lost its rear section about four years ago, and build anew on the site to create 55 rooms.
Alder added that she plans to spend about $2 million to build underground parking.
Chattanoogan Stroud Watson, who for many years oversaw the city's Urban Design Studio, raised questions about the entrance to the parking area and the site's ability to carry traffic.
"It's got to work and be friendly," he said at the earlier meeting.
Local businessman Sheldon Grizzle said at that meeting he didn't have a problem with the structure or the rooftop request. But, he, too, was concerned about the way traffic would move around the site.
Alder said the hotel design has taken traffic into consideration and the city hasn't indicated there's a problem.
On Thursday, Watson told the city panel the project "raises a lot of issues." But the committee was tasked with looking just at the plan for the fifth floor.
John Bridger, who directs the Chattanooga-Hamilton County Regional Planning Agency, said Watson's traffic concerns could be taken up during the permitting process. Watson said he planned to talk with that office.
The committee did add stipulations while approving Alder's request which related to how far the fifth floor would be set back from the edge of the building.
Alder said she's still working on raising the financing for the hotel. But, she would like the structure to open in spring or summer of 2018.
She said a professional management company would be hired to run the hotel.
Alder, who moved from Miami three years ago after she bought the building, initially had looked at putting condominiums at the site. But, she said, plans are to keep the St. George name under the new proposal.
Ann Gray, executive director of the Chattanooga historic preservation group Cornerstones, said the building was raised in 1924 and was billed as the city's first "fireproof" hotel. She believed it was still used into the 1980s but then became vacant.
The St. George Hotel, along with the nearby former Terminal Hotel, Grand Hotel and YMCA building, all served as lodging for the then-railroad station that has become the Chattanooga Choo Choo, Gray said.
Contact Mike Pare at mpare@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6318.