New Tiger Hotel operator explains project, background
Last month, the owners of the Tiger Hotel reached an agreement in which Laverick’s company will oversee the completion of the historic building’s renovation and will operate what is to become a boutique hotel.
They formed a new corporation, Columbia Hotel Investments Inc., and Laverick has put together a funding package for the more than $8 million in expenses needed to complete the project and open the hotel, perhaps as early as this fall.
The deal is contingent on the City Council approving an amended redevelopment agreement that would use Tax Increment Financing. TIF is a development incentive that lets property owners keep a substantial portion of future property taxes above the amount currently paid. The vote is scheduled for Monday.
Tiger Hotel owners Dave Baugher, Al Germond (who also own The Business Times Co.) and John Ott previously renovated the top and bottom floors of the hotel building.
Laverick said relatives on his grandfather’s side of the family have owned hotels and pubs in central Wales for more than 150 years. He was born and raised in a city not much bigger than Columbia in north Yorkshire and is a private pilot. He started promoting concerts in his teens and first visited the United States more than a decade ago.
Laverick was visiting a friend in western Missouri when he got involved with a nonprofit project to open an outdoor amphitheatre at a city park in Marshall. He later developed a larger outdoor amphitheatre in the nearby county fairgrounds, a project that failed after Laverick sold his share of the business.
He moved to Toronto where he developed concert venues including the Danforth Music Hall, worked in organizations that oversaw capital improvements and helped organize one of North America’s largest food festivals. Laverick and the Music Hall landlord disagreed on the terms of a renewed lease, and the Music Hall closed.
While he was running the Music Hall, Laverick took on his next project — the renovation of a historic theater in another part of Canada, Oshawa.
In an interview and e-mail exchange with the CBT, Laverick talked about those problematic projects, his passion for historic buildings and his vision for the boutique hotel.
How did you find out about the Tiger project, and why did you decide to get involved in its renovation?
Laverick: I’d been to Columbia on a few occasions about eight years ago and frankly hadn’t paid the Tiger any attention. As I found out later, it was an old-folks home at the time, and the original sign had long been dark. It wasn’t until about two years ago that I made a return visit to Columbia as nothing more than a detour on my way to Chicago that I just stopped by and poked my head in. About a year later, I came back to town and actually got the real tour and saw the current state of the rooms and just couldn’t believe that 50,000 square feet were sitting empty in the downtown and that there wasn’t a boutique hotel anywhere in mid-Missouri, let alone in downtown Columbia. I think John Ott would agree it’s been a long courtship for this partnership. It’s taken more than a year of research, planning and negotiations to get to the point where we’re ready to move forward and finally get the project going; I think if people understood how dilapidated the rooms are, they would see why.
You seem to have a passion for redeveloping historic buildings. Many of your other projects were theaters or concert venues, though. Why did you decide to take on a historic hotel as your next project?
Laverick: As far as historic buildings go, I think passion is the right word. It’s no doubt a cliché, but they just don’t build them like this anymore. The other historic renovations I have carried out have been on buildings built within 10 years of the Tiger, and the similarities in construction methods are remarkable.
Almost all of the businesses I’ve been involved with have been service based: bars, catering companies, theaters, ticket outlets… the Tiger is just a culmination of this accrued experience. It was an obvious progression, really. In a way, though, I suppose it’s in the blood, too. My family has had many hotels, pubs and restaurants for the past 150 years, so from that point of view, it feels right, too.
Who will manage the hotel when the renovation is complete?
Laverick: We’re looking to hire local talent with strong experience in the hospitality field, but we’re also going to be doing something exceptional with the Tiger, something that will make it stand out head and shoulders above all of the other offerings in the marketplace, so we are going to be very particular about the people we entrust the management to.
What are your plans for the hotel? How many rooms and what kind of accommodations can people expect?
Laverick: We’ll have 59 rooms, including eight deluxe suites and nine studio suites. Of course, being the tallest building in downtown Columbia, we have spectacular views on all sides. In addition to the view, each room will feature rain showers and soaker tubs, large LCD televisions with on-demand programming, luxury Egyptian cotton linens and full telecom and Internet connectivity. It will also have some of the largest room and bathroom sizes of any hotel in its class.
We’ll preserve and upgrade the maple-lined lobby and its ornate stained glass chandeliers as well as the original terrazzo floors.
We’ll also keep some of the great assets that have been added to the Tiger in more recent years: Vault, our “speakeasy” bar, the thriving catering and events business centered on the Historic Ballroom and the Sky Room at the Top of The Tiger. Bleu Restaurant and Wine Bar is also under the same roof and continues to grow.
What can you tell us about the ownership arrangement and financing for the project?
Laverick: I think the simplest way to describe it is a partnership; every one of the people involved (apart from the city) has significant money and time at stake in the project. Because of the unique nature of the project, it is extremely equity-heavy, and that’s just the reality of doing this kind of project in these economic times. John, Dave and Al will remain a large part of the project for the foreseeable future while I bring additional equity and the experience base required for the redevelopment of the hotel.
Are there any downsides for the city or for property taxpayers if the project runs into unexpected problems?
Laverick: I think this is the point where most journalists have done a questionable job in reporting — either because they don’t want to take the time to read all of the information and understand it or perhaps because they simply think it makes better headlines when you say “the city is giving away tax dollars.”
The TIF is a complex and powerful tool for cities to use, but they can put in as much protection as they want. In Columbia’s case, the city has no risk whatsoever in this project. If the project isn’t completed, the city will pay out no money.
Perhaps what is more important for people to understand is that the TIF only captures 50 percent of any sales tax on new revenues generated by the project. If this project didn’t renovate the rooms, the sales tax generated by the hotel would remain the same, and no money would be paid out for either the TIF or for the city. Sharing these new revenues means that from day one of operations the city will have increased its sales tax. So offering these incentives is better than revenue neutral for them — it’s actually revenue positive.
Do you have a rough timeline for construction? If the City Council approves the amended tax increment financing agreement, when would the renovations begin, and when do you hope to finish?
Laverick: Renovations will commence as soon as the paperwork is finalized by the city, which could be within a day or two of the next Council meeting. I think it’s reasonable to say that rooms will be available by the autumn. It’s an important homecoming this year, so that would be a great date to aim for, but until we begin some of the interior demolition, it’s hard to know what surprises we might have. And being a historic renovation adds complexity, too.
With another new downtown hotel expected to open within the next couple of years at the site of the Regency, the downtown hotel market will soon have more high-quality rooms than it has in many years. What is the target market for the redeveloped Tiger, and how do you plan to carve out your market niche?
Laverick: The Tiger will always be unique, no matter how many other hotels are built; the Tiger will always be the only luxury historic boutique hotel. We are targeting our offering at both business and leisure travelers who are looking to get more out of their hotel than they can from the existing chains in the market, but it will also be an added benefit to our wedding and event clients. I think the demand has been there for a while, but other operators have rehashed the same product over and over in Columbia.
Local media have latched on to some of the problems from your earlier redevelopment and concert promotion projects. What happened with your other renovation projects in Marshall; Toronto; and Oshawa, Ontario?
Laverick: I think the answer to each project is likely more space than you have, but the bullet-point reply is straight-forward.
In Marshall: Claims have been made that I was part of a business that failed. I sold my interest several months before the company failed and only remained a consultant to them for a short while after selling my share. There were some great accomplishments in Marshall; I brought a number of big-name acts including Willie Nelson to a town of 12,500 people.
In Toronto: We were coming to the end of a lease, and the landlord, even with the substantial renovations we’d done to his building, was looking for a 70 percent increase in rent. Additionally, the building needed significant maintenance that the landlord was refusing to perform; rain coming through the roof is hardly conducive to getting a tenant to sign a lease renewal.
When we simply packed up our equipment and left after five years, we had hosted more than 400 shows ranging from concerts with Arcade Fire, Noel Gallagher (Oasis), Lou Reed and Sir Salman Rushdie; televised events for the Discovery Channel, CTV, Sony and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation; held theatrical productions including Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Song and Dance and the off-Broadway smash The Toxic Avenger; we regularly hosted charitable events, were a significant part of the local business community and also won Canadian Performing Arts Centre of the Year in 2008. It was a great project, but after five years, it was time for a change.
In Oshawa: We took a dilapidated historic theater that had been abandoned for seven years after being a troublesome nightclub and had already had demolition permits filed for it and completely restored it into a functional theater.
There is no doubt we had issues with zealous contactors claiming excessive fees through liens, but we vigorously defended these and prevailed and opened on time, as promised. What’s more, we were a catalyst for Oshawa’s downtown. Bear in mind when we took the theater on, it sat opposite a soup kitchen with only a few businesses open around it. After we had staged events at the theater for the local university, they realized the importance of the building and bought it from us, and it is now the centerpiece of their downtown campus.
