For several years, a burned-out husk of a 20th-century motel has remained standing at 140 Emmet St., near one of the main entrances to the University of Virginia. Now, the structure is set to come down.
After a May 2017 fire destroyed the Excel Inn, where Martin Luther King Jr. stayed during his 1963 visit to Charlottesville, owner Vipul Patel quickly filed plans to build the much taller Gallery Court Hotel to provide more rooms in an area where tourism is a major industry.
This was in contrast to UVA’s plan to demolish the five-story Cavalier Inn across the street, to make way for 21st-century buildings as part of the Emmet-Ivy Corridor. The UVA Foundation had bought the inn in June 1998 for $5.6 million, paying $2.5 million over assessment. The last guests checked out in the summer of 2018, and the structure came down soon afterward.
In 2008, an LLC tied to the foundation paid $6 million for the former Econo Lodge a few doors down, and that structure was razed in 2013, though the restaurant on the site remains.
Still believing there was a role for private business to play in serving the needs of area visitors, Patel applied for a special use permit for additional height to build the 72-room, seven-story Gallery Court Hotel. Council approved the permit in October 2018, but the project has not moved forward.
Something is shifting, though. Patel applied for a demolition permit on March 23, and city officials issued one on April 14.
Patel had no comment at this time.
Is there a market for new rooms? Hotel occupancy rates rebounded relatively quickly after the stay-at-home days early in the pandemic. One in four rooms were empty in April 2020, but use returned to a more typical three in four a year later.
UVA knows there is a market for new rooms.
The University of Virginia Foundation has spent years acquiring properties along Ivy Road for its expansion, several of which have now been taken off the city’s property tax rolls because they have been transferred to the state of Virginia.
Patel’s property is a block away from UVA’s future 214-room hotel and conference center. That’s one of three buildings currently under construction on university-owned land not subject to tax rolls. It’s also a mile’s drive from the new 199-room Forum Hotel, also off the tax rolls, at the Darden School of Business.
Patel isn’t alone in wanting to keep his property from being purchased by UVA or its real estate foundation.
Last week, City Council approved a technical change to the current zoning ordinance that will allow RMD Properties to seek permission to build a large building on a one-acre parcel at the corner of Ivy and Copeley roads. While the official request has not been filed, this could be a nine-story residential building.