By Eric Curl
Aug. 18, 2024 – The familiar sight of fencing around a closed dry-cleaning business at East Bay and Habersham streets could soon be replaced by another familiar downtown sight.
About eight years after a developer announced a plan to build a boutique hotel at the location, a new developer and pending property owner has stepped in to build a hotel on the abandoned project site.
Roswell-based DSM Real Estate Partners’ plan for 401-409 East Bay St. includes the renovation with additions of two buildings and construction of one new building for a 65-room hotel, a restaurant and meeting space, according to the application.
The developer’s listed contact, Matt White, did not yet respond to a request for comment sent via email on Thursday.
DSM’s other projects include a 250-key Kimpton hotel under development in Charleston, SC; a 161-key mixed-use Marriott Tribute hotel in Atlanta and a 119-key historic building rehab for a 119-room Hotel Indigo in Memphis, TN, according to their website.
The property was supposed to be developed as a 55-room boutique Lark Hotel but failed to move forward after CEO Rob Blood described the project in a 2016 Savannah Morning News article. The existing construction fencing and orange and white temporary barricades surrounding the vacant building at Habersham have been in place for about four years now.
News of the potential development was welcomed, with a bit of cautious optimism, by Brian Huskey, who owns a restaurant, B. Matthews, immediately across Habersham from the long-stalled project site.
“We need to get that corner cleaned up,” Huskey said last week. “It’s an eyesore.”
A petition to demolish a non-historic building on the Habersham side of the property for the new 4-story building, along with the renovations and additions to the adjacent historic buildings is scheduled to go before the Historic Savannah Foundation at the meeting on Sept. 11.
The historic building on the site that will be preserved was built in 1898 and originally housed a wholesale grocery store before housing Best Laundry by 1916, according to Ethos Prervation’s report on the project site.
If the plan is approved, the project could be the latest among multiple hotels being constructed downtown. Others include a 154-room Tempo branded hotel at 220 East Bryan St. and a 100-room Ritz-Carlton at 2 East Bryan St. The Manger building, located at Johnson Square, is also being converted from an office building into a hotel and the Marriott recently acquired the Hunter Maclean building at 200 East Saint Julian St. for use as a hotel.
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