KIRKLAND, WA—With a name like Noble House Hotels & Resorts, thoughts of a portfolio crammed with baronial-style properties sited on top of a hill could easily come to mind. But Founder/Chairman Patrick Colee’s collection of 17 hotels is far from stuffy, or even traditional, ranging from the 1930s-era building that houses Seattle’s Hotel Deca to the Gateway Canyons Resort set against mountains in Colorado to the Portofino Hotel & Marina in Redondo Beach, CA, which offers sweeping coastal views.
Having grown the eclectic group of hotels at a slow but steady pace over the past several decades, Colee is now looking to ramp up the company’s expansion efforts and bring Noble House’s luxury line to the likes of Chicago, Miami, New York, San Francisco and Washington, DC.
Noble House currently has majority or sliver equity in the bulk of the properties and third-party manages three properties for LaSalle Hotels & Resorts: the Gateway for the Hendricks Family; the Mountain Lodge, Telluride, CO, for the property’s homeowners’ association; and La Torretta Lake Resort & Spa, Montgomery, TX, for Barclays Bank.
“The focus right now is to grow the company,” said Colee. “We’ve always had an attitude that we only bought a property or [took]on a property to manage if we felt like it, if it was a hotel where we could be in the top two or three hotels in a particular market. Those kinds of opportunities just didn’t come around very often. We find ourselves in a situation now where we’re finding more of those opportunities. We’re working on eight to 10 opportunities and we’re hoping we’ll close four or five of them in the next six months,” said Colee.
He noted there’s the potential to do the same in 2013. “So our goal is to add a minimum of five, and up to 10, hotels in the next year.”
The majority of Noble House properties are concentrated
on either the East or West Coast, with two in Colorado and one in Minnesota. At press time, Noble House said in October, it plans to convert its University Inn in Minneapolis to the Commons Hotel, giving it a new design incorporating “industrial schoolhouse chic.”
In terms of where and how Noble House is looking to grow, Colee acknowledged that the portfolio has been too spread out to try to make it cohesive under a brand.
Rather, Colee is not only looking for unique opportunities in the prime urban markets mentioned, but in Arizona and the Bahamas as well. The executive indicated his company is well capitalized to acquire assets, having divested two properties prior to the economic downturn, and has financial partners it can turn to as well. “And we would be open to management. The most important thing is that it’s the right product,” he said.
New construction also is feasible for the company, said Colee, who recently was in Montana looking at a new-build resort site, as well as considering a site in Chicago.
“We’re definitely looking at new-builds because people have brought us opportunities and locations. In both of these situations, we would be buying 25% and have a long-term management contract,” he said, adding the company also is open to growth via adaptive reuse of non-hotel buildings.
Taking on major renovations is nothing new for the company. In June, it acquired an ownership stake in the iconic Riviera Palm Springs Resort in California and did a remodel. Colee said Noble House also plans to enlarge one of two pools at the Riviera and add a third pool. “We have more chaises longue per guestroom than anybody else in the Palm Springs desert. Our pools are so successful that on weekends everybody wants to be at a pool. We feel we need 800 chaises longue to accommodate the crowds on Friday afternoons, Saturdays and Sundays,” he said.
Noble House also plans upgrades for the oceanfront Pelican Grand Beach Resort in Fort Lauderdale, FL, for which it acquired the management contract earlier this year.
While positioned as a luxury experience, Colee said the properties are not similar to Four Seasons or Ritz-Carlton. “We have a marketing attitude that we want to own our own backyard, which means we want the local community to use our hotels. We want them to get married there, we want them to eat there, we want them to have their meetings there. Our whole goal is to create a more casual environment; Four Seasons, Ritz-Carlton are a lot more formal. Our market is really for people who are looking for an adventure, an alternative to the commercial, branded box,” he said.
The executive noted each Noble House hotel is different, ergo the guest experience will be different. “If you come to our hotel you’re somebody who’s looking to have an experience that comes out of that community,” he said.