ESCONDIDO, CA—Forget frothy. It’s a foamy market that’s yielding the $26- million Stone Hotel here.

San Diego entrepreneur/hotelier Robert Cartwright, whose belief hotels should be so unfettered by descriptors that he calls his new company Untitled Hospitality, has partnered with Greg Koch and Steve Warner, founders/owners of locally based Stone Brewing Co., a craft-beer enterprise so successful it recently made headlines by becoming the first American craft brewery to operate in Germany, to create the lodging industry’s first craft-beer-centric, full-service hotel.

Slated to open in 2018, the 99-room hotel is being developed in partnership with McMillin, LLC, by Untitled Hospitality, which acquired the 13 acres that Stone Brewing owned adjacent to the brewery. Untitled will own and manage the property via an exclusive license agreement.

“Essentially we will pay Stone a licensing fee, which is equivalent to a certain percentage of revenue. The good thing for us is we have the ability to really build the brand from the ground up. We see this as a new category, and that this particular experience could be exported to Denver or Austin or Napa in California. We want to focus on getting this first one perfect and assuming all goes well, we would like to selectively grow Stone Hotel as an independent, specialty brand that works in all markets,” said Cartwright, Untitled’s CEO. The hotelier is fluent in operations and management, most recently as founder of Key Hospitality.

“During my 20-year career, I’ve worked with classically branded hospitality experiences at Starwood and Marriott, but it’s always been my passion to develop properties that have uncommon experiences. Greg Koch, CEO of Stone Brewing and a really good friend, approached me and said, ‘Hey, you’re the hotel guy I trust the most.’ Five years ago, I consulted for him and helped put together an RFP for a hotel. He asked about Key Hospitality but it just didn’t fall within what Key stands for. Long story short, I exited from my partners at Key Hospitality and started Untitled with the help of President/Chief Development Officer Dan Klunk and VP/Operations Hopi Stradling,” he said.

Cartwright, who also worked for Morgan’s Hotel Group, termed the new venture “a totally different hotel and experience” that would be the company’s flagship as it grows its portfolio (see sidebar), noting that at the onset of discussions with the brewery owners, he stressed the hotel “could be the most incredible experience in hospitality because there is no other ‘brewtel’ or ‘beer hotel’ that I know of.”

“You can’t rush a good thing,” stated Koch. “After originally envisioning a hotel on the property more than six years ago, we put the project on permanent hold due to our need to focus on our core obsession of brewing. Years of thought have gone into the development of Stone Hotel and it will be reflected throughout every corner of the place. I can’t wait to give our fans this amazing extension of the Stone experience.”

Cartwright emphasized, “It is really not going to be just about the beer, although, that’s a huge part of the experience. There are at least a half-million people a year who make the pilgrimage to Stone Brewing to go through their tour, to buy their beer, to go to their incredible restaurant, Stone World Bistro & Gardens.”

Staying at the Stone Hotel also will allow guests some privileges at the brewery. For example, those booked at the hotel will be able to have access to the brewery tours at whatever time they chose. “It will be VIP status to see how they make the beer, the story of how they came to be, reservations at the Stone World Bistro, etc. We’re also looking at having an educational component for those who want to learn more about the world of craft beer and slow food. I think that will be something people who are intrigued enough to come and try our hotel will have this experience of this ‘behind the velvet rope’ special access,” said Cartwright.

here will be three bars in the hotel, including a library/lounge speakeasy-type environment, the lobby/lounge check-in area will incorporate an F&B experience with a park-like ambiance and a 10,000-sq.-ft. pool deck will feature a bar and food. There will be individualized special brews or for those who like a good amount of beer—think 32 or 64 oz.—there will be growler-fill deliveries to the guestroom. “And being able to take it home with you, I think, is pretty unique,” said the CEO, adding that there will be growler storage to keep the beer fresh.

And because he himself, both as a guest and a hotelier, has been frustrated by service charges, particularly around in-room dining where a $15 hamburger becomes a $35 meal due to the tacked-on fees, Cartwright said, “In the operational design, we are going to focus on everything being as simple and seamless as possible. If it’s $250 a night then that’s what it’s going to be. And if we have to back out the taxes and the service charge and anything else, then we’ll do that.”

Designer Paul Basile is tasked with bringing the Stone Hotel concept to fruition. “The company that he does a lot of work for, Consortia Holdings/CH Projects, is a company we admire. All of their establishments just speak to the experience that we want to have,” said Cartwright.

Groups also will be accommodated with some 8,000 sq. ft. of ballroom space, boardrooms and meeting rooms.

“I anticipate we will be a growth machine for the area,” he added. “Pomerado Hospital nearby is one of the most technologically advanced facilities in California, if not the world, and I think the individual business traveler will account for about 30 rooms a night, whether they’re medical-device salespeople or people who work for companies like Google who are already staying in the area at select-service hotels.”

Stone Hotel is being positioned as an upper-upscale experience. “I’m trying to stay away from calling it a boutique or a lifestyle hotel because I just think that term is so overused. Being a specialty hotel is taking a brand that has nothing to do with hotels and making it a hospitality experience. It’s a specialized experience versus being this lifestyle/boutique/hipster explosion of hotels that you see everywhere,” said the CEO.

While he declined to go into detail, the CEO said Untitled has put “a significant amount of equity” in the project; I think we’re financing probably 65% of the entire nut, if you will. We put all the equity up front. We bought the land, and now we’re building the hotel.” HB

Keeping it uncommon

SAN DIEGO—In keeping with his goal of having “uncommon” hotels in the Untitled Hospitality portfolio, CEO Robert Cartwright’s second venture here will be The Barracks Hotel, an adaptive reuse—this time in equity partnership with developer McMillin—of eight of 10 100-year-old buildings slated for historic preservation in the city’s former Navel Training Center located within the Liberty Station neighborhood in the Arts District.

Construction on four barracks buildings (about 80 keys), three one-acre officer’s quarters that are being transformed into about 10 residential-style suites and a tri-level, former steam pump house, will begin next year, with a project-completion date anticipated in 2018.

As hotel co-owner and operator, Untitled Hospitality is collaborating with Liberty Station’s property leaseholder, the nonprofit NTC Foundation that acts on behalf of the City of San Diego, in helping bring the multimillion-project to fruition.

“When the Navy base kind of shut down 15 years ago, our partners in this particular project, McMillin, won the rights to redevelop the entire area. They [with NTC Foundation]took the Naval Training Center and revitalized it,” said Cartwright, noting, by coincidence, there’s an extant 900-seat Stone Brewing World Bistro & Garden and event center in Liberty Station.

Asked why Untitled didn’t develop another Stone Hotel on the site, Cartwright said, “The history of what these buildings were far outweighed the success factor of what a Stone Hotel would be. The integrity and history of those buildings need to remain intact. We can do what we need to do on the interior and somewhat to the exterior, but they have to remain as these historic buildings.”

The property “needs to be an arts hotel,” said Cartwright. “So, everything from interior to exterior has to reflect this artistic approach… There’s a ton of artifacts from these buildings that we’re going to repurpose to pieces of art, partnering with local and out-of-town artists to help us reimagine these artifacts and buildings and to create, really, an art spectacle and make it just incredibly unique.”

—Stefani C. O’Connor