Friday, January 18, 2008

McKinney’s Grand Hotel set to expand

By Rodney Williams of McKinneyNews.net

MCKINNEY — The Grand Hotel, McKinney's only luxury hotel, will be getting even grander in the coming months thanks to a massive expansion project slated to begin April 1.

Don Day, owner of the Grand Hotel located on the downtown square, said that he has purchased the building next door currently occupied by Legal Aid of Northwest Texas (which is moving in March) and will use that space to expand his hotel.

The Grand Hotel currently has 14 rooms and occupies 7,500 square feet of space. Good, but not good enough, according to Day.

"Business is good, but a 14-room hotel is small. We have a strong demand for more rooms," he said.

Day said that he has received approval from the City of McKinney to take down the building next door and a crew will begin demolition of the building currently housing the legal service in April. The current structure, located on the Grand Hotel's west side, will be torn down to make room for the new building which will contain 32 rooms, occupy 16,000 square feet of space and serve as the main lobby for the hotel.

The new building will also be faithful to the historic look and feel of McKinney's historic downtown, using red Acme brick on the facade.

"When we get done most people will think it was built 100 years ago," Day said. "It will look very historic."

What will remain the same is the basic concept of the Grand Hotel; luxurious, unique rooms and excellent service, according to Day. No two rooms at the hotel are exactly alike, each hosting different art, linens, beds and furniture, much of which was procured by another business on the square, Arabella's. French linens with high thread counts, luxurious-feel robes (a big seller) and high-end queen- and king-size beds help give the young hotel it's identity. Nightly rates begin at $159.

"There are hotels and motels along the highway, and some of them are nice and some aren't, but none of them are even close to what our rooms are like; they don't bring anywhere near the level of service we bring," Day said. "We're filling a need in McKinney that has not been serviced before. The business community has responded tremendously."

Day said between hosting business meetings and weddings, the Grand Hotel has been booked virtually every weekend since it opened in June of 2007. It wasn't long ago that Red Lobster's corporate office, which is located in Plano, called wanting to hold its annual executives meeting at the hotel. Unfortunately, it needed 30 rooms.

"We lost that account because we didn't have enough rooms, and that's a fairly consistent event," Day said. "We have about a wedding a week here. In many cases weddings take every room we have and they're still wanting more rooms."

What makes the Grand Hotel such a desirable locale for brides and businessmen is the fact that it adjoins the upper-end Rick's Chophouse, which Day also co-owns, and has a large upstairs ballroom which hosts meetings, wedding receptions and even wedding ceremonies.

The expanded hotel will have 46 rooms, including two suites and a large "penthouse suite." The plan is to cut doorways to link the current hotel and the newly expanded part, with one each in what is now the front lobby and one in the elevator lobby.

It won't be an inexpensive project. Day estimates the cost for the expansion to be in the neighborhood of $2 million. But the infrastructure is already in place to support the build.

"Our management staff, without adding one executive, can manage 46 rooms as well as 14 rooms," Day said. "We will add some house maids, but this expansion will give us a lot better efficiency of scale."

The parking issue, already dicey downtown, has already been addressed. Day has purchased a vacant lot two blocks south of the hotel and will turn that into a parking lot for his valet service. Even the McKinney Economic Development Corporation is helping out as it recently granted Day a $51,000 financial incentive to run utility taps to the outside of the new building for sprinkler systems.

Day said he expects the expansion project to be completed by the end of 2008.

For more information on the Grand Hotel, visit rickschophouse.com.

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