"The whole front will be a nice glass wall looking out into Gay Street,” said Keelen, who arrived in February to become general manager of the Hyatt Place Downtown Knoxville.

History by design

The design is heavily influenced by history, he said.

"We know what an important piece of history this has been for Knoxville,” Keelen said.

The hotel at 530 S. Gay St. was named for Knoxville-area native David Glasgow Farragut, Union admiral in the Civil War and renowned for his victory at the Battle of Mobile Bay. It opened in 1919 and operated as a hotel into the early 1970s, hosting luminaries such as baseball stars Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, Israeli Prime Minister David Ben Gurion, South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem and TV host Merv Griffin. The Knoxville Symphony Orchestra started in 1925 in the hotel ballroom, and the Southeastern Conference began at a 1932 convention at the Farragut.

The new incarnation will have lobby art honoring Admiral Farragut. In early June a call went out for local artists to propose 11 works for the lobby and meeting areas, some themed for Farragut and some evoking the Smoky Mountains.

The hotel should open in “the back half of October,” Keelen said. Rates will vary with seasons and special events, but on ordinary nights rooms will run in the “high hundreds,” Keelen said.

The price tag

The project is expected to cost $25 million, Keelen said. That’s up $3 million from a year-old estimate, due in part to always-uncertain historic renovation costs, said Mike Cohen of Cohen Communications Group.

The new Hyatt will have eight floors of guest rooms, 3,300 square feet of meeting space, a basement workout room, and a glassed-in rooftop event space seating 90 to 100, Keelen said.

Research indicates millennial travelers would rather work in public spaces like the lobby than in their private rooms, so the high-tech design is geared for that, Cohen said.

The hotel will offer a breakfast buffet for guests, but will not have a full-service restaurant because there are so many restaurants within a short walk, he said.

Though the lobby is still stripped to the walls, on upper floors drywall is in place. On a walk-through of guest rooms, Keelen showed off the high-arched windows which have been retained. Rooms won’t be identical, he said.

Since the building is W-shaped, all guest rooms will have windows, Cohen said.

The new elevator will go all the way to the rooftop event space, which will include restrooms and a bar, Keelen said. The enclosed area will offer seating, fire pits, and a panoramic view to the southeast. It will open as a rentable private event space, but the hotel will host its own events open to area residents, Keelen said.

Local developer's plan

In 1975 the Farragut was bought for use as an office building, and many interior features were torn out for that purpose. It sat empty for nearly a decade, but local developer Rick Dover bought in September 2014 after a California developer’s plans fell through, according to the Dover Development website.

In April 2016, Dover and local officials announced a deal to turn it into a Hyatt Place, aiming for completion by summer of this year. By that time the building’s only tenant was the French Market, which has moved a block and a half to 412 Clinch Ave.

The deal included a payment in lieu of taxes agreement with the city, freezing property tax at its current rate for 25 years, expected to be worth $7.7 million. Dover also received a $2.9 million HUD Section 108 loan. The project was expected to create 200 temporary construction jobs and eventually employ 80 full-time hotel workers. Rick Dover said he would rely on the East Tennessee Historical Society for help preserving the Farragut’s original look.

Dover Development will continue to own the building, and chose Merrillville, Indiana-based White Lodging to manage the hotel. Hyatt gives developers a choice of management companies for its smaller branded properties, Cohen said. As general manager, Keelen works for White Lodging.