General Contracting for Hospitality Groups in Amarillo

Garage, ballroom and suites arrived together on one downtown block, and that package tells you how hotels are financed and built in Amarillo. The 226-suite Embassy Suites opened with 18,000 square feet of meeting space, a 10,000 square foot ballroom and a 750-space parking garage, as a public and private partnership with the city that began construction in October 2015. Hospitality groups here often weigh a city partner, a convention center or a highway site against one another, and each leads to a different build.

The audience for a Panhandle hotel is also unlike a coastal or resort market. Guests are business travelers, ag and energy visitors, hospital families, ball game crowds, college parents and drivers stopping for a night on the interstate. They expect clean rooms, quiet air handlers, dependable hot water and parking they can see from the front desk. They do not pay for architecture they cannot use.

We build and renovate select-service and full-service hotels, extended-stay properties, conference space, restaurants and the structures around them. We are direct about budgets and honest about what hail, wind and a long supply chain can do to an opening date.

Downtown Amarillo has been a hotel market because of public venues. A 2019 trade report listed a 119,000 square foot corporate headquarters, the 6,631-seat Hodgetown ballpark, the Embassy Suites with its conference center and the conversion of the Fisk Building into a Courtyard hotel among downtown projects. A ballpark creates summer weekend demand, an office creates weekday demand, and a conference center creates group business. A group deciding where to build or buy needs to know which of these drivers is near enough to count.

The highways do the rest. More than 20 million vehicles a year cross the I-40 and I-27 interchange, and the Route 66 corridor still carries traveler services. The town of Vega, west of Amarillo, grew around tourist courts and motels on the old highway, and remains a stop for travelers. Our work in downtown Amarillo and the highway corridors gives us a clear view of which sites suit a select-service flag and which need something else.

New-build select-service hotels are usually three or four stories with wood or light-gauge steel framing, corridor loaded rooms, a lobby with breakfast space and a pool. We handle the whole package: site, foundations, structure, MEP rough-in, room finishes, FF&E coordination and brand inspection. Brand standards add review cycles, so we put them in the schedule.

Conversions and renovations are different. The downtown Courtyard conversion in the Fisk Building shows that historic or office buildings can become hotels, but room counts, egress, plumbing stacks and elevators all have to be checked. We take on those jobs under renovation and adaptive reuse. Property improvement plans (PIPs) are a third category: a franchise requires new carpet, bath finishes, lighting and furniture by a date, and a floor-by-floor plan keeps rooms in service while a few are closed. New builds are covered in our hotel construction page.

Per-key cost is driven by structure, MEP, finishes and the amenity package, but local factors move it by real amounts. Soil and foundation design come first: clay that moves with moisture needs engineered fill, grade beams or piers. Roofs are second, because hail has damaged so many Amarillo-area roofs: a storm in June 2020 produced more than 500 insurance claims in each of Potter and Randall counties, with baseball-size hail reported in the Wolflin area. A hotel owner should specify impact-resistant roofing and protect rooftop equipment.

Parking is the other large item. A surface lot is cheapest, but downtown sites may need a structured solution, and the partnership model used for the Embassy Suites included a garage. We price those decks under parking structure construction. Owners comparing sites should carry a line for utility connection fees, for water and sewer capacity checks, and for the meter and backflow requirements that hotels face.

A hotel opening is a chain of inspections: city, fire marshal, brand and sometimes lender. We schedule them in the right order and prepare each one, and we complete rooms in blocks so that brand reviewers can sample finished floors while others are still being completed. Hot water recirculation, PTAC or fan coil selection, corridor sound ratings and window quality decide guest reviews, and we raise them in the preconstruction meeting rather than the punch list.

Restaurants and bars attached to hotels bring grease, gas and exhaust requirements; see our restaurant construction work for what those add. Hotel groups that also operate retail pads or fuel stops can read how we handle those in our retail chains practice.

We build in Amarillo along I-40 and the Loop 335 corridor, in Canyon near West Texas A&M and Palo Duro Canyon State Park, and in towns where a new employer is creating demand. Dumas, for instance, has a business park under development and more than 18,000 vehicles pass through daily. A smaller town may support a 60-room property, a branded extended stay or no hotel at all, and we will tell you what we see.

For groups assembling land, our real estate developer practice can price the site work and utilities before purchase. Call us before you sign a contract on a parcel and we will walk it with your civil engineer.

Send the brand, the number of rooms and the parcel. We will return a budget per key, a schedule and a short list of risks.

Can a hotel in Amarillo be built in a public and private partnership?

It has been done. The downtown Embassy Suites was built as a partnership with the city, with a parking garage as part of the package. These arrangements add council approvals, funding agreements and public bidding rules to the schedule, so we map them early and keep records to a public standard.

What roof should we specify given hail?

Ask your architect and insurer about impact-rated membranes or shingles, and plan protection for rooftop units, skylights and exterior signage. Hail in this region can be large enough to generate hundreds of claims in one storm. The extra cost of a more durable roof is usually small compared with a claim and a closure.

How long does a select-service hotel take to build?

After permits, a typical three or four-story select-service building takes about a year of construction, depending on size and weather. Brand reviews, FF&E delivery and inspections add to the final weeks. We build the schedule backward from the opening date and tell you which items are on the critical path.

Can you renovate rooms while the hotel stays open?

Yes, floor by floor. We isolate the work area, route debris away from guests, and schedule noisy tasks for hours when the property can manage them. The cost of lost room nights is part of the decision, and we help you compare a phased approach with a short full closure.

Do you work outside Amarillo?

Yes, we serve the surrounding region and price travel and lodging openly. A site on I-40 or in a county seat is within normal range.