Hyatt hotel will anchor One Beale development in Downtown Memphis

Ted Evanoff | Memphis Commercial Appeal

Fifteen years after it was first proposed, Carlisle Corp. showed off its design for One Beale on Tuesday, offering a mix of historic preservation and contemporary architecture that would be the first major new development Downtown in a decade.

The $115 million hotel and apartment project would turn an unremarkable corner on the street behind the Orpheum Theatre into what is being called a gateway intended to link the Beale Street Historic District with the park amenities built along the Mississippi River.

Although those amenities include Beale Street Landing, a $43.6 million passenger ship terminal for riverboats, an overhead railroad trestle tends to hide the riverfront from the touristy blocks sloping up from the river.

Carlisle unveiled plans for a 227-room hotel designed in a contemporary style to suit the historic district’s musical heritage and provide a friendly appearance to encourage pedestrians on Beale to venture beyond the trestle.

“We felt a stewardship obligation to the city to do something fantastic,” Chance Carlisle, chief executive of Memphis-based Carlisle Corp., told several dozen people gathered Tuesday for a news conference announcing plans to proceed with the project.

Plans show an L-shaped hotel footprint that runs along Beale and makes an abrupt angle onto Front Street. In images displayed at the news conference, the red-brick building rises seven or eight stories and shows a curving face to Beale.

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Rather than present uniform rows of windows, the architects staggered the windows on each floor. Viewed from afar, the style suggests musical notes. Long expanses of ground-floor windows look out at the streets. The hotel would be branded as a Hyatt Centric.

The design, Carlisle said, “connects the city to its riverfront” and is “befitting America’s most iconic street.” The three-block-long historic district contains restaurants and night clubs that draw an estimated 6 million local visitors and tourists each year.

The hotel, located on what is now a vacant site, would extend to the historic Ellis machine shop next door at 245 Front St.

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The shop would be renovated into meeting space for hotel conferences. Nearby, a new parking garage would rise; topped by a swimming pool and masked from view on Front by a new building containing some 220 upscale apartments and 15,000 square feet of office space for Carlisle Corp.’s new headquarters. The new apartment structure would stretch south of the Candy Factory Suites, a landmark residential building on Wagner Place.

“We’ve had to grind a little on this development. It was never easy, but we had no doubt this day would come,” Carlisle said.

Plans for the 30-story skyscraper, proposed two years ago at the actual address of 1 Beale, have been shelved and are now described as the second phase. The site occupies a vacant block facing Wagner Place, a street between the hotel site and the railroad tracks. Carlisle said Wagner would be closed to vehicle traffic for the development.

Highwood Properties of Memphis has been retained to find a major office tenant for a proposed new office building that would contain 200,000 to 400,000 square feet of office space. Highwood’s search for an anchor tenant has begun, Carlisle said, although he offered no specifics.

The project would be the first significant real estate development Downtown since the $250 million FedExForum arena was opened in 2004 next to the historic district. It came three years after Peabody Place Mall, now the ServiceMaster headquarters, opened a block away.

During the news conference, Carlisle referred to the office project as One Beale and the hotel-apartment development as 245 Front. That’s the location of the former Ellis Machine Shops. Carlisle Corp. bought the historic structures and decided to incorporate them into the development project after conferring with advocates for keeping old buildings intact.

Memphis political, tourism and historic preservation officials lauded the project and Carlisle on Tuesday during the news conference:

“Thank you for making what was a dream for this preservationist a reality,” said June West, Memphis Heritage executive director.

Describing the project as a kind of beacon to the region, Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell said it shows “Shelby County is inventive, growing and prosperous.’’

While companies, nonprofits, and government agencies in metro Memphis have spent about $13 billion on expansions since 2010, the desire to preserve the old Ellis property and other unique structures shows Memphians favor the past, said Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland, noting, “We take our heritage to heart and build on it rather than knock it over.”

Referring to the notion Nashville’s popularity has made it America’s ‘’it city,” Memphis Tourism head Kevin Kane said the wave of completed and coming expansions is transforming the metro area from Collierville to the riverfront, making it, “let me tell you, Memphis is the new it city.”

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The late Memphis entrepreneur Gene Carlisle proposed One Beale 15 years ago. It was envisioned as a 30-story skyscraper.

His heirs at Carlisle Corp. have expanded the footprint and scaled back plans for an office tower until a major tenant is in hand.

In 2015, the firm was awarded a 20-year PILOT tax break and $10 million in public assistance for a public parking garage at One Beale.

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