University of Virginia kicks off hotel and conference centre project

Imagery courtesy of Jack Looney Photography.

The University of Virginia (UVA) and its partners have broken ground on a new 223,000-sq-ft hotel and conference centre in Charlottesville, USA.

Targeting a spring 2025 debut, the hospitality centre will be managed by Pyramid Global Hospitality.

Convening space

The development will anchor UVA’s emerging and strategically important Emmet-Ivy corridor land parcel. It aims to be a destination property and convening space for guests and visitors to the university, its local community, faculty, staff, students and conference attendees. The site will provide multiple spaces for hospitality, business and academic conferences, and includes plans for a university welcome area.

The as yet unnamed hotel will feature 214 guestrooms and suites, a full-service restaurant with indoor and outdoor terrace dining, a rooftop café with panoramic views, and a grab-and-go eatery. There will be 25,000 sq ft of technologically advanced meeting and event space, including a 10,000-sq-ft ballroom, which will be the largest in Charlottesville. The meeting and event venue will be certified by the US Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED), and will conform to the university’s 2030 sustainability goals.

Community bridge

Those present at the groundbreaking ceremony included Jim Ryan, president of UVA; Jennifer “J.J.” Wagner Davis, executive vice president and COO of UVA; Tim Rose, CEO of the UVA Foundation; Colette Sheehy, UVA’s senior vice president for operations and state government relations; Stephen Brockman, partner at Deborah Berke Partners and David Keith, CEO of Hanbury Architects, which is leading architecture and design for the property; and from Pyramid Global Hospitality, senior vice president Ellen Sinclair and vice president, sales and marketing Hal Powell.

Pyramid Global Hospitality’s Sinclair remarked: “We are pleased to partner with the university to bring Charlottesville and the academic community an incredible new gathering point along the Emmet-Ivy corridor. The intentional, sustainable design of this new hotel and conference space will be excellent, no doubt advancing the University’s mission to be great and good in all they do. Pyramid Global Hospitality will bring the same dedication to excellence to the guest experience come 2025.”

UVA’s president Jim Ryan added: “This will be a crossroads for the university – and the university’s front door. The hotel and conference centre will play an important role as a place where people can gather and stay – prospective students and their parents; data scientists, faculty from the law school can meet there with members of the medical school faculty. This will be a bridge that makes the community stronger, bringing worlds together in ways that are predictable and unpredictable.”

Pyramid schemes

Pyramid Global Hospitality was formed by the 2021 merger of three hotel and resort management companies. The organisation’s global portfolio spans more than 240 properties in the US, Caribbean and Europe.

Other upcoming US hotels the company is due to manage include Autograph Collection Hotel Jacksonville in Florida, Residence Inn by Marriott Oakland in California and Cambria Hotel New Haven University Area in Connecticut.

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