Commercial Appeal Story

Construction of a new boutique hotel is underway in a former motor lodge that was the first Holiday Inn in Downtown Memphis in 1963.

Most recently an EconoLodge, the building at 22 North B.B. King is being converted to a Hotel Indigo in a nearly $15 million project by Three P Partners of Marietta, Georgia.

It will feature 119 guest rooms, remodeled, outfitted and furnished in the style of InterContinental Hotels Group’s chain of small, boutique, lifestyle hotels; a renovated lobby and restaurant with a local chef; and a pool with cabana bar on the eighth floor.

Guest rooms occupy the top three floors, perched atop six levels of parking and the ground-level lobby floor of the 10-story building.

Memphis firm brg3s architects’ design shows the gleaming building with a freshened exterior and a lush layer of ivy screening the middle floors of the parking garage.

Three P recently pulled a building permit for $5 million in renovations. Interior demolition and asbestos abatement is in progress. The hotel’s operator, New Orleans-based Expotel Hospitality Services, expects the Indigo to be open by August.

The project closes a 55-year-long loop for the building at B.B. King (formerly Third) and Court, which was originally conceived as a parking garage and office annex for the Sterick Building, the towering next-door neighbor.

Three P has applied to have the property placed on the National Register of Historic Places. A National Register nomination form prepared by architect Chooch Pickard of Arch Inc. Memphis says the building is historically significant.

Kemmons Wilson, who launched Holiday Inn in Memphis in 1952, built his first Downtown Memphis hotel on top of the parking structure, working with developer Herbert Humphreys and architect Merrill G. Erhman.

Holiday Inn, now part of the IHG family of brands, later converted the Rivermont Club to the Holiday Inn-Rivermont and ran the 550-room hotel on Riverside Drive from 1966-1984.

Ehrman’s firm, a partnership with Max Furbringer, was responsible for designs of the Mid-South Coliseum, Graceland and the Overton Park Shell.

The “Sterick North Garage & Hotel” was said to be the first hotel/garage combination of its kind in the country, and it utilized a groundbreaking structural element devised by Chinese-born engineer Tung-Yen Lin. The engineer’s “Lin Tee” was a pre-stressed concrete structural T-beam capable of spanning a longer distance and supporting more weight than a previous design.

The hotel basement in the early 1970s was home to a popular nightspot, Pierre’s, a cabaret-style venue in which cocktail waitresses also performed musical numbers, the nomination form notes.

“The combination of unique structural engineering and the connection to Kemmons Wilson make it a historically significant structure that’s an important part of the historical fabric of Memphis and Downtown Memphis,” said Larry Spelts, chief development officer of Expotel.

Pickard said the historic nomination is pending at the National Park Service. If the building is designated, the project would become eligible for historic preservation tax credits.

SouthCore Construction, a Kennesaw, Georgia, firm specializing in hotel renovations, is the general contractor. The building permit values construction at $5 million.

Spelts said a relatively low purchase price, $5.9 million, enabled Three P and its investors to spend more money on renovation and still earn good returns.

“This is not lipstick on a pig,” Spelts said. “This is a very thorough renovation.”

“The thing that really defines Hotel Indigo is it’s a reflection of its locale and its neighborhood,” Spelts said. “They’re distinctive, whether it’s a new building or an adaptive reuse.”

“The challenge for an architect is to capitalize on the distinctiveness of the building and then make it esthetically appealing. What are the attributes of that old 20th century structure they can play on to make it distinctive and architecturally interesting?”

“They’re definitely going for a retro, mid-20th century look, which is really hot right now,” Spelts said.

The renovation will be relatively quick because it uses the original hotel rooms’ layout. “I’ve already seen a model room. It turned out beautifully, with gorgeous fixtures and finishes,” Spelts said.

The hotel and restaurant will employ about 100 people, he said.

Reach reporter Wayne Risher at (901) 529-2874 or wayne.risher@commercialappeal.com.