New boutique hotel to open in downtown Waterville late 2020
by Emily Price
After speaking with Colby Vice President of Planning Brian Clark, it sounds as though the classes of 2019 and 2020 will have a new place to stay when they come back to visit Colby after graduation. Waterville is getting a new hotel right on Main Street in the heart of the downtown area. Scheduled to be completed in late 2020, the new downtown hotel will hopefully become an exciting new development in the revitalization of Waterville. This week, the Echo sat down with Clark to find out a little bit more about what the hotel developers have planned for Maine travelers, Colby students, and Waterville residents alike.
To give a bit of background on the process, Clark explained that planning for the hotel started about five years ago. The space that it will occupy is located at the south end of Main Street, close to The Silver Street Tavern. According to Clark, the property has been vacant for a decade. The City of Waterville also recently received a $7.5 million grant to convert Main Street to two-way traffic, which will improve accessibility to this part of the downtown area. The developers hope that the physical construction of the hotel will start later this year, and that it will take about 12 to 14 months to complete. Although the design for the hotel is not set in stone, one thing Clark does want to clarify is that it will not be a typical “boutique” hotel.
Clark explained, “I think everyone, just like me, is really trying to understand what this thing is. There have been a lot of questions out there about whether it will be a boutique hotel. When people hear ‘boutique,’ they think exclusionary, expensive, and maybe more high-end, whatever that might be, but really people think it means something that the market cannot support or something that isn’t appropriate for the area. When we say ‘boutique’ it’s really about the fact that it’s an independent hotel. It’s not a Marriott, it’s not a Hilton, it doesn’t have that sort of association with it. And this just means that we’re tasked with crafting and deciding what type of look and feel we think is the best fit.” The idea of “best fit” is something that Clark and his team have been taking very seriously. “We’ve been meeting with members of the Waterville community to really help us understand and think about how to really make this property integrated with the local community,” said Clark. He emphasized the importance of connecting the hotel not only to the local community, but central Maine in general.
Clark continued, “I don’t have the specifics about what the unique look and feel of the hotel is going to be, but one thing that we are really excited about is how to leverage and connect into Maine in really big ways. This includes having an authentic central Maine experience, and not the lobster buoys and lighthouses that you might see in Bar Harbor … but what is it about central Maine, this place, the outdoors, the art and culture scene, that makes this place special.” Clark also mentioned that the hotel’s restaurant will try to source as much of its food from local farmers as possible to give customers a local feel. He and his team hope that this local experience will be attractive to a wide range of customers. This will be important, as the hotel will see a diversity of guests as seasons change.
Clark hopes that the hotel will stay busy because so many people travel to Waterville and the surrounding area for so many different reasons. Between parents, hospital workers, leaf-peepers, skiers, alumni, and more, Clark expects the hotel will enjoy a constant flow of guests, enough to sustain it year-round. “We hope that this will be an attractive option for people who might otherwise choose to stay in Portland or Augusta and commute from there,” explained Clark.
The hotel is expected to host about 50 guests at a time, in a mix of suites, king rooms, and double queen rooms. But where will all of these guests park? Doesn’t the downtown area already struggle with too many student vehicles taking up all of the parking spots? Clark provided insight into how his team has been handling this dilemma: “We have a lease with the city for 42 parking spaces and a city-owned parking lot right there. And then back in June this past year we bought the Camden National Bank building site, and with that it allows us to have a lot more on-site parking. We’ll have quite a bit of parking to meet guest needs as well as restaurant patrons.”
Clark also discussed the partnerships he has built during the early development of the hotel. Very recently, and only publicly announced as of March 7, 2019, Clark’s development team partnered with Baskerville Architects and Charlestowne Hotels to really get things moving. Clark elaborated, “Baskerville Architects are leaders in hospitality design. It’s an integrated architecture and interior design and engineering firm, which is really important when you’re designing a hotel room because you have to think about things like where the outlets go in relation to where the beds are.
They work across the world and work with both branded properties, as well as independent properties, which is what we’re doing …so they know how to design from the bottom up. So that’s a huge advantage for us.” “We also now have an operator for the hotel and the restaurant. And that is a group called Charlestown Hotels. They are an independent hotel and restaurant management company. They have a very extensive portfolio of college and university hotels that they manage. For example, they are developing a hotel at Elon and just took over the Colgate Inn. They’re incredibly knowledgeable about working in a college town, so we’re very excited to be working with them.” Although the hotel has yet to be named, the new downtown spot is sure to be a popular topic in the coming year, especially once construction actually begins. For more information on hotel updates, check for a press release from the developers on March 7, 2019.
