By Friday afternoon, Rob Benetti was ready. After nearly eight months of construction on the Hotel Skyler, Benetti, the hotel’s general manager, was prepared to welcome his first guests at around 3 p.m.

‘The planning started over a year and half ago and the construction started in September,’ he said. ‘Eight months from the first hammer swinging to the point that we’re at right now. And it was nothing like what you see now.’

The Hotel Skyler, located at 601 S. Crouse Ave., opened its doors Friday for the first time. Approximately $6.7 million was spent to renovate the building, which was previously the location of the Temple Adath Yeshurun, a Jewish temple. The hotel will hold its grand opening reception Tuesday from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. at its location on South Crouse.

‘It was originally built as a Jewish temple and then it spent time as a playhouse — the Salt City Playhouse — and then it sat vacant for a number of years,’ Benetti said. ‘So this will be its third life.’

The original deadline for construction to be completed was April 1. Benetti said the construction ended up surpassing the deadline because workers were finishing up last-minute detailing on the hotel and were making sure everything was set up properly for the guests.

‘If you look back and say only eight months of construction for a project like this, it’s unheard of,’ he said.

Benetti said about half of the rooms in the three-story, 58-room hotel were filled for Friday. All of the rooms were completed on Friday and only minor construction remained, he said.

By Saturday, the hotel had 40 of its rooms filled, said Tom Fernandez, director of marketing for the Woodbine Group, which owns and developed the Hotel Skyler. The group also owns the Parkview Hotel and Genesee Grande Hotel.

Fernandez said he expects Syracuse University parents and students to use the hotel, located about a half-mile from the Carrier Dome, when they visit the area to attend events at SU. The Hotel Skyler is not an option for SU students during the housing reservation process.

‘We have two other properties in the direct area and we definitely feel part of the SU campus, and that is a big drive,’ Fernandez said. ‘We definitely enjoy our SU parents and our SU students and everything that goes on with the university.’

The Hotel Skyler’s proximity to Upstate Golisano Children’s Hospital and the Syracuse VA Medical Center will also draw people to the hotel, Benetti said.

Fernandez said the hotel’s commitment to sustainability also fit well with the Syracuse area and the green initiatives carried out at SU and the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry.

The Hotel Skyler is LEED platinum designed, but has yet to be certified, Benetti said. LEED platinum is the highest rating given out by the U.S. Green Building Council. If certified, the hotel would become the only hotel in Syracuse and one of three hotels nationwide to receive the platinum certification, Benetti said. 

The hotel’s king-size rooms start at $199 per night and the suites are ‘considerably more,’ Benetti said. The hotel has a fitness center, business center and a café, he said. Each guest room comes with Wi-Fi, Time Warner Cable high-definition programming, flat-screen TVs, refrigerators and individual thermostat-controlled rooms, Benetti said.

Benetti said 16 geothermal wells, each measuring 499 feet, will help with the heating and cooling of the hotel. When construction began last September, Benetti said workers gutted the building, as there was a large auditorium that stretched from the building’s floor to its ceiling.

Much of the hotel’s paneling is made from wood that has been reclaimed and reused, Benetti said.

‘The key is that we took a building that would’ve sat empty and through reuse and upcycling, we built a sustainable project in here,’ he said.

But the building’s brick exterior, front doors and columns remained untouched during construction, Benetti said. Some of the building’s original moldings and window structure were also preserved in the hotel so guests can get a feeling of the history of the building, he said.

‘It’s a cool property,’ he said. ‘I guarantee if you tour all the hotels today, you’ll see nothing like what you see here. It’s going to be fun, it’s going to different, it’s going to be casual, but when you walk in your room, it’s a comfortable environment.’

jdharr04@syr.edu

Published on May 2, 2011 at 12:00 pm

Contact Jon: jdharr04@syr.edu