This Downtown Apartment Building Is Becoming a Hotel, for Some Reason

A view of the G in context with its surroundings in the northwest corner of downtown. Image: The G Apartments

I’ve always hated the name of the student-oriented apartment complex located at 1715 Guadalupe Street in downtown Austin: “The G.” You know, short for Guadalupe. Like an ice pick in the ear every time. Da Gee! But this goofy name’s reign of terror could soon come to an end, with new permits for the 79-unit building — which opened a decade ago on the former site of an Arby’s, if you believe in the idea of karmic debt — now indicating the complex will be converted into a Tru by Hilton hotel.

This is fairly unusual, since you’ll sometimes see hotel to apartment conversion projects but rarely the other way around, and when you do it’s typically some sort of short-term rental play taking down a floor of units in an existing building like the Guild rather than an entire apartment complex flipping to franchise a mid-scale Hilton brand you’re likely to encounter on the side of the highway near an airport. But the fact that this building was specifically designed as student-friendly housing due to its proximity to the University of Texas might make it more suitable for this conversion.

It sorta looks like a hotel already, I guess. Image: The G Apartments

The unit count of 79 seems kinda low for a building this big, but that’s because the mix of apartments here is intended for roommates, with each residence leased by the bedroom. There are a few studio units, but most of the apartments in the building contain two, three, or four bedrooms; and the selling point is that each bedroom gets its own full bathroom. The permit for the hotel conversion doesn’t go into any further details on this, but it seems like it would be pretty trivial to throw up some extra walls and turn these bigger units into multiple hotel rooms. 

Lighting Up the History of Austin’s Last Original Arby’s Sign

We’ve learned not to bother asking “why” when it comes to these kinds of projects — not just because the folks at the G or the building’s owners at the extremely anonymous “United Capital LLC” won’t respond to our emails, but because the answer is usually pretty simple. Somebody believes that running a hotel here is likely to be more profitable than leasing apartments to students, who insist on writing negative reviews about the elevators in the building allegedly being out of service for three months and whatnot. Maybe they’re right, but it’s still an unusual plan. Have the owners also considered bringing back the Arby’s?