From Office to Hotel to Multifamily: Developer Plans $19M Inner Harbor Redevelopment
By Keith Loria June 6, 2023 4:13 pm
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Byrnes & Associates has acquired Hotel RL Baltimore Inner Harbor, with plans to begin an $18.5 million redevelopment and convert the 10-story Baltimore hotel into an apartment building.
The seller, Red Lion Hotels, acquired the property at 207 E. Redwood Street in 2015, while it was still an office building, for $15.7 million. It then spent $3.5 million to redevelop it as a hotel, which closed last year.
“The need for multifamily in Downtown Baltimore is due to the current vacancy rate of approximately 4 to 6 percent,” Brad Byrnes, president of Byrnes & Associates, told Commercial Observer.
The converted apartment building will feature 130 studio, junior one-bedroom and one-bedroom units. The development’s amenities include a fitness center, a banquet room and conference rooms, with a game room and storage space additionally planned.
“This was a savvy conversion because the project was completely gutted and converted from office to a hotel in 2015,” Byrnes said. “Therefore, our construction activity and costs are limited because we are keeping the exact amount of rooms, and adding a small kitchen and washer/dryer and doing some cosmetic upgrades such as painting and hallway carpets and lighting.”
Nearly 155,000 people reside within a two-mile radius of the buildings, including more than 68,000 households with an average household income approaching $90,000, according to the company.
In 2020, Byrnes & Associates acquired adjacent sites at 225 and 233 E. Redwood Street, a combined 90,000 square feet of office and retail space, and spent $5 million to renovate and rebrand the four- and 13-story assets as Vickers Exchange and Redwood Exchange respectively.
The company has inked 60 office and retail leases at the buildings, increasing occupancy to 65 percent from 5 percent at acquisition.
Kove Group will serve as the general contractors on the project and is part of the investor acquisition team along with Brendan Ferrara of Carm Capital.
Update: This story originally misattributed source material. This has been corrected. We apologize for the error.
Keith Loria can be reached at Kloria@commercialobserver.com.
