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Hotel Expands at Avant Building

Embassy Suites Will add 29 rooms, Cites Demand

By Jonathan D. Epstein

November 19, 2010
 

Uniland Development Co. will expand its new Embassy Suites Buffalo hotel to the eighth floor of the Avant Building, adding 29 rooms just over a year after the hotel first opened in the former Dulski Federal Building.

The expansion at 200 Delaware Ave. in downtown Buffalo will bring the total room count to 182, enabling the hotel to accommodate more meetings and events, and the guests they bring.

It capitalizes on what officials said is the success and demand the hotel has experienced since opening in July 2009. The hotel has already achieved the goals that were not expected to be met until after three years of operation, said Michael Montante, vice president of Uniland.

“The response has been tremendous,” said Bryan Drew, the hotel’s general manager.

“The demand for hotel rooms, coupled with increased banquets and meetings, helped us make the decision to expand.”

The hotel recently became the most-sought-after hotel in the state on expedia.com.

“We continue to be excited about the Embassy Suites Buffalo,” said Jim Holthouser, global head of Embassy Suites and full-service brands for Hilton Worldwide, which owns the Embassy Suites brand. “It has exceeded all of our expectations. We consider it a model for future urban Embassy Suites.”

The hotel, managed by Brookwood Hospitality, currently includes 153 rooms, with banquet facilities for up to 350 guests and seven breakout rooms. It also has a lap pool, fitness center, salon and spa, and four restaurants.

According to Smith Travel Research, hotel occupancy in the Buffalo Niagara region continues to rise. For the Embassy Suites in particular, occupancy for October stood at 77 percent, although it sometimes exceeded 80 percent on a weekly basis because of Sabres games and Delaware North Cos.

Work will start this month on the expansion, which is slated to be finished by April, just in time for the peak summer season with travelers and a “full calendar” of meetings and events, the company said.

“The success at the Embassy Suites since they’ve opened is a testament to the quality experience that visitors are having at this property,” said Dottie Gallagher- Cohen, president and CEO of the Buffalo Niagara Convention & Visitors Bureau.

Montante noted that the Elmwood and Delaware avenues corridor around the Avant has seen $295 million in investments in the past five years — including the Avant, the new federal courthouse and other projects — that have created a vibrant 24-hour area that appeals to hotel guests and businesses in the area.

The expansion will mark the completion of another floor in the Avant, which features the hotel on the first seven floors, the Damon Morey law firm on the 11th and 12th floors, and 28 upscale condominiums on the top three floors.

The eighth through 10th floors had originally been slated for commercial office space, although Montante said hotel space had always been an option for the 25,000 square feet on the eighth floor. He denied that Uniland is expanding the hotel because it couldn’t land enough commercial tenants.

He said officials felt expanding the hotel would be a better use of the floor. “When we look at the different uses of the building, and we look at what the market is like for those different uses, it comes down to what our gut feeling [says] is going to be the stronger performer,” Montante said. “By adding the 29 rooms, it makes the hotel and the entire Avant project a stronger project.”

Uniland has signed two commercial tenants on one of the two remaining commercial office floors. Niagara Controls is moving from 77 Broadway and doubling in size, taking 1,500 square feet. An unidentified federal agency will occupy 10,000 square feet, with jobs that are new to the region, Montante said, without elaborating.

That leaves another 40,000 square feet on the two adjacent floors, which Montante said can either be connected for one large tenant or broken up into separate suites as small as 1,000 square feet.

jepstein@buffnews.com