Goin' Condo
Thursday, September 1 2005
PEOPLE, PRODUCTS & IDEAS THAT MAKE HOTELS LOOK GOOD
HEADNOTEThe condo hotel boom presents design challenges and opportunities
IMAGE PHOTOGRAPH 1This rendering of a guest living room in the Regent Bal Harbour, FL, a condo hotel under develpment, reflects the refined and luxurious feel that its developer specified.
It's a good time to be a hospitality designer. Development is up in most sectors of the lodging industry and that means lots of work, in both new construction and renovation.
Perhaps the busiest segment currently for design work is condo hotels.
It's a segment that has contributed to a $30-million backlog of work for CVC & Associates, a hospitality outsourcing company headed by Craig V. Cook. Cook has observed the dramatic rise of condo hotels in central Florida, where he says eager developers are buying aging twostory motels, tearing them down and replacing them with 10- to 20-story buildings.