The University of Virginia and its partners have broken ground on a new 223,000-square-foot hotel and conference center in Charlottesville, Va., targeting a spring 2025 debut. The hospitality center, the official name of which will be revealed at a future date, will be managed by Pyramid Global Hospitality.
People at the groundbreaking celebration included Jim Ryan, president of UVA; Jennifer “J.J.” Wagner Davis, EVP and COO of UVA; Tim Rose, CEO of the UVA Foundation; Colette Sheehy, UVA’s SVP 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, SVP Ellen Sinclair and Hal Powell, VP of sales and marketing.
The new 214-room hotel and conference center will anchor UVA’s emerging Emmet-Ivy corridor. It aims to be a destination property and meeting 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 will have a full-service restaurant with indoor and outdoor terrace dining, a rooftop café with panoramic views and a grab-and-go eatery. It will also have a 25,000-square-feet 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, and will conform to the university’s 2030 sustainability goals.
“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," Sinclair said in a statement. "The intentional, sustainable design of this new hotel and conference space will be excellent.”