Charles Hotel

I wanted find out a little bit more about the proposed Charles Hotel. I found an article in the Berkeley Daily Planet about the Hotel. The proposed hotel, which would be called the Berkeley Charles Hotel will include 210 hotel rooms, a conference room, a ballroom, retail space, and 50 residential condos. The hotel may also include an upscale restaurant and a jazz bar.

The location of the hotel, at Center Street and Shattuck, is on university property, and the university is one of the major proponents of the project.

The architectural firm responsible for the project has worked on the Charles Hotel in Cambridge, the St. Regis in San Francisco,an aquarium ine Lisbon, Portugal, a medical facility at Mass General, and the Museum of African Diaspora (MoAD) in San Francisco. The firm will work with a local architect and a green building specialist in designing the hotel. The design team hopes to attract both visitors and local residents to the hotel, which will they hope will serve as “living room” for the community. The design team is open to proposals to daylight Strawberry Creek and create a pedestrian space on Center Street.

City council members, such as Dona Spring, have voiced support for the project based on the developers’ history of involving the community in projects and designing ecological buildings.

The project still faces difficulties. Though a majority of the site is owned by the university, a portion of the site is owned by the Bank of America. The developers are currently working out a deal with the bank, which will likely be incorporated into the hotel.

Suzanne La Barre, Four Star Hotel in the Works for Downtown Berkeley, The Berkeley Daily Planet, June 16, 2006, available at http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/article.cfm?storyID=24411.