Sustainability is a goal for many hotels these days, but for the team behind the new Hotel Marcel in the Long Wharf district of New Haven, Conn., sustainability was the project's entire reason for being.
The building, an example of brutalist architecture from Hungarian architect Marcel Breuer, opened in 1970 as the headquarters and laboratories for the Armstrong Rubber Co. Eighteen years later, the Pirelli tire company acquired the building, occupying it until 1999. After the turn of the millennium, the structure remained empty for the better part of 20 years, despite getting on both the Connecticut Register of Historic Places and the National Register of Historic Places.
During those years, several companies suggested turning the vacant building into a hotel, said Bruce Redman Becker, director of the Westport, Conn.-based Becker + Becker architecture firm, which developed and owns the hotel. Becker + Becker had primarily focused on commercial and residential projects in the past, but the Pirelli Tire Building gave the director an idea for how his company could expand into hospitality.
When Becker pitched his concept to the owner of the building at the time, Ikea (the building was located in the parking lot of the store), the development firm and the Swedish furniture company found a synergy. Rather than a formulaic approach, Becker said he was interested in working with the existing structure. “I was able to formulate a concept that really embraced not only the architectural legacy of building—which is so important—but also around sustainability. And those are both things that are near and dear to Ikea as well.” After a year of shaping the plan, Ikea sold Becker + Becker the building—on Dec. 31, 2019. Becker and his team spent the next two years turning the office complex into a hotel as the pandemic limited workers and materials alike.
Building and Owning
Becker sees “a real benefit” to simultaneously owning and designing a project, a practice his company has followed on several recent developments. “It just gives us a little more ability to solve problems in an interdisciplinary way,” he said. “And when you develop a hotel, particularly if you're going to do it in a way that's innovative and does things a little differently, you need to be able to really be decisive.” As they sought out sustainable features like solar panels and high-performance windows, they knew where to get Commercial Property Assessed Clean Energy financing and grants to make it feasible.
Becker and his team knew their adaptive-reuse hotel would face challenges meeting certain brand standards, and opted instead to join a soft brand collection. “We wanted to come up with a hotel that really celebrated the Breuer architectural legacy, this amazing midcentury modern design,” he said. Joining Hilton’s Tapestry Collection gave the team, fairly new to hospitality, some needed support. “It was really important for our financing and for our success to have a partner like Hilton that could, first of all, make sure that we had [met the] standards for a really high level of guest experience that Hilton's so adept at, but also get all the support that comes with that.” Working within Hilton’s soft brand gave the company “design flexibility” to meet the most important standards, but without having to compromise on the historic preservation or sustainability goals.
Converting the office space into a hotel meant removing all of the sheetrock walls and finding ways to use interior areas without windows. “But that's where we put our maintenance rooms and [our] one megawatt battery, so that we can store electricity from our solar panels and operate the hotel if it's off-grid,” Becker said. The hotel’s 14 interior Lightwell rooms, meanwhile, get their natural light from a light shaft.
Going Green
Becker, a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design-accredited professional, was determined to make the hotel as sustainable as possible. The hotel was designed to meet LEED Platinum certification—the highest ranking—and uses solar panels on the rooftop and the parking canopies to provide all of the building’s electricity.
The triple-glazed windows save about 80 percent of the hotel’s energy bills, Becker said, and also help reduce noise from the nearby highway. “The sustainability [initiatives] didn't require compromises,” he said. “In fact, I think what we found was by almost every measure, things we did to enhance sustainability also enhanced guest comfort.”
Hotel Marcel
LOCATION
The Hotel Marcel is in the historic Long Wharf District of New Haven, Conn., within walking distance of the Metro North station and adjacent to the I-95. The hotel is also adjacent to an Ikea store and, for the time being, close to the Long Wharf Theatre’s current space.
OPENING
May 2022
NUMBER OF ROOMS
165
GENERAL MANAGER
Michael Scandariato
WEBSITE
www.hotelmarcel.com
OWNER
Becker + Becker
MANAGEMENT COMPANY
Charlestowne Hotels
OPENING OBSTACLE
The COVID-19 pandemic struck just as the Pirelli Tire Building was turning into the Hotel Marcel, with all the inherent logistical challenges that presented. “We had to be flexible in our electrical switchgear,” Becker recalled, noting that it took the team approximately 30 weeks longer to get this equipment than it should have. “So we had to work around that with temporary electrical systems. We actually powered the building, for the last phase of construction, from our solar panels.” Cost increases also posed some challenges, Becker said, but the C-PACE loans helped soften the blow.