Definitely great news, and not to seem repetitive but the News Journal has a more detailed article in the paper today about this one with a rendering.
Another hotel planned for beach core
Carlton Proctor • cproctor@pnj.com • August 13, 2008
Little Sabine Inc. will start construction next month on a 162-room Indigo Hotel on a portion of its 26-acre property on the Gulf of Mexico.
The announcement comes just three days after hotel developer Julian MacQueen said he would start building a $60 million, 206-room Holiday Inn on Pensacola Beach in October.
"We will break ground the first week of September," said Joe McCay, spokesman for Little Sabine, a division of American Fidelity Life Insurance. "We've hired the Morette Company as contractor, and we have all the permitting in place."
The hotel is expected to be ready for guests in the spring of 2010, said Buck Lee, general manager of the Santa Rosa Island Authority.
Lee said the Little Sabine plan is "more great news for Pensacola Beach."
"The design looks fantastic," Lee said, "and it's my understanding it will be the first of three hotels, with a total of 485 rooms, that they plan to build on their 26-acre site."
Indigo hotels are a brand franchise developed by IHG, parent company of Holiday Inn, Crowne Plaza and Intercontinental.
The Indigo Pensacola Beach will be only the ninth hotel built under that brand, and the first exclusively on the Gulf of Mexico, McCay said.
The nine-story Indigo will be the first hotel in a three-phase development of the Little Sabine's site, formerly home to the old Holiday Inn, razed after sustaining heavy damage from Hurricane Ivan.
Construction costs were not disclosed by developers, but are expected to approach $50 million.
Coupled with Innisfree's proposed 206 Holiday Inn rooms, the two projects will be a huge shot in the arm for Santa Rosa Island, said Sandy Johnston, executive director of the Pensacola Beach Chamber of Commerce.
"It's just what the doctor ordered," she said.
Johnston also noted that before Hurricane Ivan, Pensacola Beach had 946 hotel and motel rooms.
After Ivan, the beach lost nearly half of those rooms, but has built that inventory back to 929 rooms.
When Indigo's 162 and Holiday Inn's 206 rooms come on line in spring 2010, Pensacola Beach will have a total of 1,297 rooms, a 37 percent increase over pre-Ivan numbers, Johnston said.
Indigo room sizes will average 498 square feet, and the hotel will have a restaurant and lounge, in addition to 3,000 square feet of meeting space.
The hotel also will have a rooftop swimming pool, and underground parking, McCay said.
"Indigo is a boutique hotel," McCay said. "The color schemes and furnishings will be very different from anything at Pensacola Beach. ... Every season, the color schemes will change in the hotel."
Architects for the project are the Adache Group, the Fort Lauderdale firm that designed Portofino Towers on Pensacola Beach.
Link:
http://pnj.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article...NTPAGECAROUSEL