Help this Tree Live on...

It is a necessary evil of construction that trees gets displaced. We had this beautiful, mature tree on the northwest corner of our site that obstructed our entry driveway. As much as we wanted to preserve it, the construction activity would have subjected the tree to a slow death. Instead we decided we needed to memorialize the tree in a new inert form. 

The whole trunk of the tree now lives off site, but we want to bring it back to its birth place at 500 College Avenue after construction is completed. Friends of the project have been kicking around different ideas, such as cutting the trunk in sections to create cylindrical stools, all of which are possible. We invite you to share ideas about how you might repurpose this tree by posting a comment or emailing rialtopp@gmail.com.

The Big Pour

You will notice from today's album that we can barely contain our excitement over the pouring of concrete. This marks the official completion of the foundation for the first level of the hotel. Stay tuned as the hotel's five stories come up over the course of the winter season. 

The Rialto Club Takes Form

We are starting to see The Rialto Club take shape along College Avenue. The basic elements--the exterior wall and the columns, and the ceiling--are all in place; and the vision for the use of the space is building everyday. 

Bryan Mermans and TS Adams Studio are architecting the interior of the club space, intended to be a special events venue for private gatherings, music performances and other occasions. Check out our visit to the site on November 5th.

Interiors Presentation

Take a sneak peek at the interior design of Hotel Indigo Athens by Ellen Hanson Designs.

Community Outreach

Our architectural model is now on tour and has traveled from Atlanta to Madison to Athens.

First stop: Sustainability Expo at the Madison Morgan Cultural Center (www.madmorg.org), where one of our investors is an active board member and champion for green architecture. The exposition drew in crowds of locals interested in learning more about sustainable practices in Georgia—from geothermal and solar technologies to land conservation and sustainable forestry. Hotel Indigo Athens was proud to represent green building and educate the community about LEED standards. See pictures by linking here.

Next Stop: Mercury Art Works gallery in Athens. Chris Wyrick and Sandi Turner threw us a party we’ll never forget. We mixed and mingled with Athens locals and even had a surprise guest come down from New York (see pictures here). Ellen Hanson introduced her ideas for the interiors and invited local artists to collaborate. We are delighted to see some of these budding relationships begin to develop.

Final Stop: Construction Trailer on Site. The architectural model will be temporarily housed in Athens for on-site tours. Also coming soon on site: a full-scale model of one of our hotel rooms, fully furnished and detailed!

UGA Music Business Program

The UGA Music Business Program continues to capture the hearts and minds of our project team. We see great value in a program that develops the symbiotic disciplines of economics and the arts.

Just recently, our project team decided to commit to a substantial donation in support of the UGA Music Business Program. Hotel Indigo Athens' investors, general contractor, architects, engineers, interior designers, attorneys, and other consultants all agreed to give a portion of their fees generated by the project to the Program. For details, please view our Press Release.

We visited a UGA Music Business Program class yesterday and were greeted by over 80 talented students. Each one displayed a self-made, hand-crafted nameplate, which attested to the individual expression behind each creation. No doubt this was a clever assignment by Bruce Burch and Keith Perissi to teach the students the importance of standing out among a crowd. We are excited to have a student extern, Emmy Bateman, join our Hotel Indigo marketing team. She will be helping us build a student program for attracting music talent to the hotel.

Athens Art Scene

Athens is a gold mine for the arts. Between the University of Georgia's commitment to art education and the larger community's promotion of local talent, there exists a richness of spirit and culture unique to this college town.

For the first time ever, UGA introduced a four-day Arts Festival featuring fine and decorative arts exhibits, as well as musical and theatrical performances. Honoring UGA's new home for arts education, the festival kicked off with the Lamar Dodd School of Art building dedication, which our development team attended this past Thursday. We were very impressed by the building's accomplishments in sustainability, from its green roof to its water conservation efforts (includes a stormwater infiltration system). But the building's most unique sustainable feature is the art on the walls--continuously produced by both faculty and students, and displayed on a rotating basis. Our hotel seeks to create the same community-inspired environment through art exhibits that refresh seasonally.

We are excited to find so many people within the Athens community that share our philosophy about sustainable development as it relates to the arts. From the Athens Design Development group to the Mercury Art Works duo, we are discovering unforeseen opportunities that we cannot wait to realize. The home of Sandi Turner and Chris Wyrick is a good example of what we would like to create within the hotel--a place where the boundary between art gallery and living space blurs:

School Starts, Construction Underway

Classes began at UGA this week, and we had our first on-site construction meeting. The project team, including JM Wilkerson, Surber Barber Choate & Hertlein Architects, and Rialto Property Partners, as well as key project stakeholders, gathered in a double-wide trailer to discuss the construction schedule. Site grading and underground storm water systems are currently underway, which you can see from our walking tour of the site (visit album First On-Site Construction Meeting). August 11, 2009 is our target date for completion.

This week we saw a pronounced difference in the pulse of downtown Athens. The streets have come to life with the arrival of UGA students. This observation reminded us of the value of bringing student perspective into our project. We just hired an Interior Design student from UGA who has the talent to make a unique contribution to our hotel. In addition to helping us with space planning, Sarah Brown will be helping us make inroads with the university's art departments. Design and art are a big part of our vision for the hotel, and we are looking for opportunities to bring in new ideas via student competitions.

Nuci's Space and Athens Land Trust

We took a trip to Athens yesterday to personally deliver our "greenbreaking" donations to Nuci's Space and Athens Land Trust (see Album entitled Nuci and ALT). We are so impressed by what these organizations have accomplished, we can't help but talk about them.

Nuci's Space was created in honor of Nuci Phillips who was a talented musician and student at the University of Georgia until he took his own life in 1996. Nuci suffered from depression, and so the Foundation created a place where musicians could seek mental health treatment without stigma. During our visit, we could see why the foundation has been so successful at attracting musicians and saving lives, from the sound-treated practice rooms to the people behind its mission. We had the opportunity to meet Nuci's mother Linda, as well as Bob Sleppy, who spoke very candidly about their personal motivation behind the cause.

We also met with Heather Benham of Athens Land Trust who is working to create energy-efficient and affordable housing for the Athens community. At the same time, the organization is responsible for protecting 1200 acres of farmland and forestland. We learned that land trusts are playing a large role in natural resource protection--more than 6.2 million acres of greenspace in the U.S. is protected by land trusts according to a recent census.

Our greenbreaking has inspired us to leave a development footprint that's as green and responsible as Athens Land Trust, and to create a hotel environment that's as welcoming and memorable as Nuci's Space. One detail about Nuci's Space that was particularly striking was its location in Athens, just in front of the tower where Athens' most famous band used to practice--how's that for tribute?

Construction has officially commenced

A massive amount of dirt has started to move around our site. We consider this news to mark the official commencement of construction. To view more pictures of the site grading, please visit today's album.

Wondering why your weren't invited to a groundbreaking event? Because we didn't have one! In lieu of a traditional hole-digging ceremony, we decided to have a "greenbreaking" instead, and diverted funds to support community intiatives, including Nuci's Space and Athens Land Trust. Check out our offical announcement to the press here: http://www.athensdowntownhotel.com/indigo-pr-80408.pdf

Ellen Hanson Designs

Our NYC based designer Ellen Hanson has a mention in the New York Times today. Look for the Home section, under the article "What Green Means in the Hamptons" (Page D7 in paper format), where photographs of her kitchen and dining area design are featured. We love the handcrafted table, made of pieces of lumber from the original house and sitting on steel legs made by a local blacksmith.

Just as our architects Surber Barber Choate & Hertlein have designed the building to meet Gold LEED criteria, Ellen Hanson is using a green lens in her selection of the hotel's interior finishes and furnishings. Because there are no LEED-equivalent standards for interior furnishings, she has self-imposed such design criteria as specifying materials sourced from within a 500 mile radius and using local suppliers whenever possible.

Ellen is also the creator of the "Green Scene" on 1stdibs.com.

Athens Grow Green Coalition

We recently learned that Athens has its own organization for promoting sustainable development called the Athens Grow Green Coalition (AGGC). We have taken interest in the group, because we share their mission to promote responsible community development.

Last week we had the opportunity to meet two representatives of the board, and we have been thinking about ways to get involved. We have been tossing around different ideas, from providing financial support to assisting with a lecture series on sustainable development. Stay tuned for future updates, but we wanted to get the word out about the group's initiatives, one of which is an annual report called "Growing Sustainability."

Corey Smith Concert

Friends of UGA's Music Business Program, UGA Alumni, and friends of Hotel Indigo – Athens gathered on Saturday night to see Corey Smith perform at Chastain Park. Over one hundred people showed up at Rick and Jane Fine's home for a cocktail party before heading over to the concert on a Fur Bus. Our crowd took over a whole section and danced the night away to tunes of "The Good Life", "Every Dawg" and "Twenty-One." Check out Corey's website and have a listen: www.coreysmith.org/music.cfm

Also take a look at our slide show of pictures from the evening (link here)—they do a way better job of describing the fun we had. If you had as good a time as we did, please post your comments and/or send photos to rialtopp@gmail.com. Thanks to everyone who came out to support Athens' musicians.

Searching for sustainable building materials

We have been exploring sustainable building materials this week, and we are overwhelmed by the number of green options out there. In flooring alone we have seen everything from recycled hardwood to “green” vinyl. Our fear of “green washing” kicks in and we feel compelled to do our homework.

We are learning that product life cycle information is hard to find, and that we have to trust our suppliers to provide truthful statistics. It seems that almost every manufacturing company is advertising a green advantage of some kind. But we are resolved to find products that go above and beyond meeting LEED standards, products that are exceptions to general claims of sustainability.

Here is an interesting twist on sustainability… This week Shaw introduced us to a “prison wood” line of Anderson flooring. It meets the usual criteria we look for in sustainable products (such as recycled content and responsible manufacturing), but there is also a story about the people behind its creation. The wood is hand crafted by inmates at a correctional institution in South Carolina, near Anderson’s headquarters. It is a voluntary job that pays above minimum wage; it helps inmates build skills and a work ethic; and it prepares them for re-entry into society. In return, Shaw/Anderson is able to deliver a beautiful, high quality product. It’s sustainable on all dimensions—a generative workforce using recycled product to create a distressed wood that designers love.

About our Site

The site of our project is five blocks from "The Arch" at the corner of College Avenue and Broad Street. Yesterday morning we took a walking tour of the site and wandered up to campus. The heartbeat of Athens is centered around the university, and our hotel is just far enough away to feel like an oasis from the student activity.

We spent some time yesterday thinking about how to bring the heartbeat of Athens into the daily activity of the hotel. We see this coming to life through showcasing local talent in the arts. We became very excited by all the possibilities as we toured the new Lamar Dodd School of Art, housing everything from painting to printmaking. There is real potential for us to help promote student talent, not just in wall art, but in the public art realm—stay tuned for updates as we create a design competition for an outdoor sculpture on our property.

To see pictures from our July 3rd trip to Athens, link to our slideshow entitled "Site Photos & Athens Tour."

The Journey Begins...

Welcome to our first blog entry about the Hotel Indigo - Athens. Consider this a living diary of our journey to build a sustainable boutique hotel.

What makes this project so exciting is the people that are involved. Just yesterday, we visited with bankers, musicians, curators, and an investor, and every one of them is enthusiastic about what a community-based hotel means for Athens.

Creating community is one of our key tenets for sustainable hotel development. As an example of how this can play out, we are working with UGA’s Music Business Program to carve out a space on our property as a dedicated performance venue. This venue would serve as a live lab for business students and musicians to manage concerts and exhibit new talent. Proceeds would go back into the program and help grow UGA’s reputation in the music business.

The passion of the people involved is inspiring. We just learned that one of our key investors is an avid botanist and loves the Arts-and-Crafts aesthetic of Greene & Greene and Frank Lloyd Wright. Our visit to his lakeside home in Buckhead (Madison, not Atlanta) yesterday reminded us that environments are expressions of the people who live in them. We were impressed by every detail of our experience, from the architectural features to the Meyer lemon squeezed into our drinking water. To share our tour with us, check out our slideshow entitled “House on Lake Oconee.”

Please visit our blog often and post comments that will help us to better develop our thoughts.