An early rendering of the Cambria hotel project. This rendering shows the tree being discussed for removal, highlighted in red. Photo courtesy of Rhode Partners.
Another day, another hotel going up in downtown Austin. This time it’s called Cambria, a hotel project designed by Rhode Partners, proposed at 68 East Avenue. It’s worth noting that this address is directly adjacent to the Homewood Suites project, which is currently under construction. Hotels on hotels!
The site of the Cambria project at 68 East Avenue is just one street over from the heart of the Rainey Street district. Photo courtesy of Google Maps.
This is not the only hotel built under the name Cambria — it’s an emerging upscale brand for the Choice Hotels holding company, which also owns Comfort Inn, Comfort Suites, Quality Inn, and many other chains of budget to midrange lodgings.
The entrance to the Cambria Hotel at Times Square in New York. Photo courtesy of Choice Hotels.
Cambria hotels are either under construction or recently completed in Nashville, Philadelphia, Phoenix, and several other major cities around the country, as Choice Hotels attempts to capture some of the momentum of the modern “limited luxury” hotel trend personified by brands like Aloft.
A current street view of the Cambria site, looking from East Avenue. Photo courtesy of Google Maps.
The exact number of floors is not indicated on the preliminary Cambria site plan by Rhode Partners, but judging by the available renderings the building appears to be roughly 12 to 15 stories high, with the first six floors dedicated to lobby space, a parking garage, and amenities like an outdoor pool and meeting rooms.
The floor plan for the ground level of the Cambria project. Photo courtesy of Rhode Partners.
Though the current renderings show little in the way of specific design, perhaps the most notable detail is the hotel’s plan to remove or relocate two trees that encroach upon the site — a 24-foot pecan and 43-foot American elm. We hope they can figure out something more elegant than just tearing them out of the ground, but sometimes that’s how these things end up.
We wish the project luck, but the competition will be stiff. With so many hotels in the area, and even more on the way, the brand will have to work a little harder to stand out from the pack. Competitive pricing wouldn’t hurt — it would be nice to have somewhere to stay directly adjacent to the Rainey Street bar and restaurant district that wasn’t decidedly in the “luxury” price bracket.
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