Grove Park Inn has a new owner — again.
This morning, June 12, Omni Hotels & Resorts announced it would purchase the property, along with four other resorts. All five properties are owned by KSL Resorts.
“We want to make this as smooth of a transition as possible, so we’re mostly excited to keep everything status quo,” says Anne Tramer, vice president of corporate communications for Omni. “We’re very excited to have such an iconic resort in that part of the country be part of our fold.”
In May 2012, KSL bought the Inn from Sammons Enterprises, which had owned the resort for about 60 years. Since the sale, the property has undergone extensive renovations.
Tramer says upgrades that are already underway will continue. Those changes include a new restaurant, Edison, which is scheduled to open this summer. “As of right now, we’re planning to stick with what’s already underway, and then we’ll make some decisions,” Tramer says. “We’ll try to figure it out moving forward. Right now, everything is going to remain the same as planned.”
The change in ownership should be smooth for everyone involved, including employees, Tramer says. “We’re actually not intending to make any associate changes,” she says.
In turn, Tramer hopes the Inn will benefit from Omni’s stewardship. Omni is far larger than KSL; after this deal, KSL will retain just four properties while Omni will own about 60. “We have a corporate office and a larger portfolio of properties,” Tramer says. “In that sense, we’re hoping to really support the resort and drive more business and traffic not just to Grove Park Inn, but to Asheville as a community in general.”
Omni is headquartered in Dallas and owns hotels in Charlotte and Atlanta, in addition to dozens of other cities throughout the US. Its resort locations include Florida and South Carolina.
As part of the deal with KSL, Omni will acquire resorts in Texas, Virginia and California. The Wall Street Journal values the five-resort sale at “roughly $900 million.”
For more information about Omni Hotels, click here.
To read the Wall Street Journal’s overview of the deal between KSL and Omni, click here.
To read a press release from Omni Hotels, click here.
For more information about the Grove Park Inn, click here.
(Photo from Groveparkinn.com)
Given the Grove Park’s reputation as one of Fitzgeralds’ haunts while writing “The Great Gatsby”, can we assume the newly purchased Grove Park Inn will be remodeled in 3D in order to bring in a younger crowd?