BOSTON, THE WOODLANDS, Texas – Oct. 11, 2022 – The University of Virginia (UVA) and its partners have broken ground on a new 223,000-square-foot Hotel and Conference Center in Charlottesville, which is targeting a spring 2025 debut. The hospitality center, whose official name will be revealed at a future date, will be managed by Pyramid Global Hospitality.
Those present at the October groundbreaking celebration included Jim Ryan, president of UVA; Jennifer “J.J.” Wagner Davis, executive vice president and COO of UVA; Tim Rose, CEO of the UVA Foundation; Colette Sheehy, UVA’s senior vice president for operations and state government relations; Stephen Brockman, partner at Deborah Berke Partners and David Keith, CEO of Hanbury Architects, which are leading architecture and design for the property; and from Pyramid Global Hospitality, Senior Vice President Ellen Sinclair and Vice President, Sales & Marketing Hal Powell.
Pyramid Global Hospitality’s Sinclair remarked, “We are pleased to partner with the University to bring Charlottesville and the academic community an incredible new gathering point along the Emmet-Ivy corridor. The intentional, sustainable design of this new hotel and conference space will be excellent, no doubt advancing the University’s mission to be great and good in all they do. Pyramid Global Hospitality will bring the same dedication to excellence to the guest experience come 2025.
UVA’s President Jim Ryan added, “This will be a crossroads for the University – and the University’s front door,” he said. “The hotel and conference center will play an important role as a place where people can gather and stay – prospective students and their parents; data scientists, faculty from the Law School can meet there with members of the Medical School faculty. This will be a bridge that makes the community stronger, bring worlds together in ways that are predictable and unpredictable.”
About the Hotel and Conference Center
Come spring 2025, the new 223,000-square-foot Hotel and Conference Center will anchor UVA’s emerging and strategically important Emmet-Ivy corridor. It aims to be a destination property and convening space for guests and visitors to the University, its local community, faculty, staff, students and conference attendees. The site will provide multiple spaces for hospitality, business and academic conferences, and includes plans for a University welcome area.
The hotel’s 214 guestrooms and suites will be a convenient, centrally located choice for all those visiting UVA and the Charlottesville area. Guests will find a full-service restaurant with indoor and outdoor terrace dining, a rooftop café with distant panoramic views, and a convenient grab-and-go eatery. There will be 25,000 square feet of technologically advanced meeting and event space, including a 10,000-square-foot ballroom, which will be the largest in Charlottesville. The meeting and event venue will be certified by the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED), and will conform to the University’s 2030 sustainability goals.
