[Urbannizer]

Downtown Austin Getting Two Hotels at 5th & Brazos Tower

Dual-branded hotels are all the rage these days, and Austin is no exception — the recent Aloft / Element project downtown, White Lodging’s Autograph Collection / AC Hotel currently under construction near the University of Texas Campus, and the Hotel Indigo / Holiday Inn Express combo over in the Red River Cultural District are good examples.

They say it only takes three to make a trend, but this week, we’ve got a fourth member of the dual-branded pack. At a development luncheon hosted earlier today by the Real Estate Council of Austin, Rich Leisy, regional vice president for Ryan Companies, announced the two hotel brands — or “flags,” as they’re known — for the upcoming 32-story mixed-use tower planned by Chicago-based developer Magellan for the parking lot located at the northeast corner of Fifth and Brazos Streets.

So what are we getting? The two brands headed for 5th & Brazos are both concepts of international lodging outfit Two Roads Hospitality. The first is Thompson Hotels, an upmarket boutique concept with locations in New York, Chicago, Nashville, Seattle, and Toronto — along with three in Mexico. The brand has recently demonstrated an effort to enter the Texas market in a major way, with hotels in the pipeline in Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, and now Austin.

The second, simply known as tommie, is a seemingly millennial-targeted “lifestyle micro-hotel” brand only recently acquired by Two Roads after an aborted attempt to enter the New York market as a Commune Hotels & Resorts property, which has since merged with Two Roads. The brand is fashioned as a sort of little brother to Thompson, with the first Two Roads location set to open in Hollywood by 2020.

Both hotels are situated on the same level of the building, between floors five and 14. The Thompson Hotel, with 211 keys, is the larger of the spaces — but the tommie, with its petite room sizes, still manages to fit 190 keys in a smaller space of the building.

According to Leisy, the project will deliver its hotel components by early Q4 2020, with the residential usage delivered in three phases that will also complete in Q4 2020. Overall, the project’s final completion is currently scheduled for Q1 2021.