To celebrate the company’s 20th anniversary, Kalahari Resorts & Conventions opened its fourth property in November. The resort in Round Rock, Texas, is Kalahari’s first to open in the South, and, at 1.5 million square feet, follows the Lone Star State’s tradition of making everything as big as possible, taking up half of a 350-acre lot.
Steady Growth
The Nelson family opened the first Kalahari resort in 2000 in Wisconsin Dells, Wis., followed by a property in Sandusky, Ohio, five years later. The family opened the next resort in Pennsylvania’s Pocono mountains 10 years after that, although Travis Nelson, an owning member of the company, said the family was actively looking for a spot to build a Texas resort before that hotel opened.
The Texas location is ideal, said Natasha Nelson Lucke—daughter of founders Todd and Shari Nelson as well as an owning member of Kalahari Resorts & Conventions and the company's interior designer—because it is close to several feeder markets. “We like to be close to Austin, the capital, because 50 percent of our business is actually group business and then the other 50 is transients,” she said. The property also is within a few hours’ drive of Houston, San Antonio and Dallas. Beyond that, Nelson noted, the state’s economy has been “booming.”
During the development process, the Kalahari team kept in touch with city officials and with the two different mayors who have held tenure, said Nelson. “And that was really the thing that sealed the deal—the city officials, the mayor, Laurie Hadley (the city manager)—they said, ‘We want you and we will do whatever it takes to make it happen.’ They worked with us from the very beginning and really helped us get what seemed impossible.” From conception to opening, the project took five years, including 30 months of construction.
The COVID-19 pandemic struck during the last third of construction, but the team was able to use the resort’s size to its benefit. “The indoor waterpark has 90-foot-tall ceilings and it's 225,000 square feet, so you really can find space [to] spread out into, to be able to have your safe distance,” Nelson said. The company also enforced—“strictly”—a mask policy and regular sanitization of all surfaces, he added.
The company’s original model in the North is for families to come to an indoor waterpark when they can’t go outside. Texas would have a decidedly different climate—both literally and aesthetically—so the team hired Dallas-based HKS Architects to help the resort take advantage of both indoor and outdoor space. During the development process, the team decided that an indoor pool was still necessary. “We were working this summer here in July and August, and we would do anything to not be outdoors,” quipped Lucke. “We're thinking it's going to be the opposite of our other resorts.” The indoor areas will be busiest in the summer, she explained, while the temperate winters will be comfortable for outdoor activities.
Inspiration
The Kalahari brand takes its name from the desert that covers much of Botswana as well as parts of Namibia and South Africa, and the company’s hotels incorporate elements of design from different African cultures. The newest property blends both African and Texas design, Lucke said. “We've got these beautiful stone walls on our entry that [are] supposed to replicate the Great Zimbabwe ruins, but we use Texas flagstone to create the look,” she said. “We're using a lot of natural materials and leathers and beautiful wood.” To source the African elements of the property, the team bought pieces from artists in Zimbabwe, Zambia, Tanzania, South Africa, Ghana, Kenya and Mozambique.
But as the project came to life over the five-year development, Nelson said the team eventually realized that their appetite was bigger than their budget, and some planned elements had to be cut. “We had the most beautiful rooftop pool bar ever designed, and unfortunately you can only do so much,” he said, acknowledging that the project’s budget was stretched many times over. “So we've lost a few things that only we'll ever know were ever going to be a part of the resort, and that's just part of the process unfortunately. Value engineering is a part of every project, and this one was no different.”
KALAHARI RESORT ROUND ROCK
LOCATION
Round Rock, Texas, within driving distance of several urban hubs including Houston, San Antonio and Dallas.
OPENING
November 2020
NUMBER OF ROOMS
975
GENERAL MANAGER
Tim Arnold
WEBSITE
www.kalahariresorts.com/texas
OWNER
Kalahari Resorts & Conventions
MANAGEMENT COMPANY
Kalahari Resorts & Conventions
OPENING OBSTACLE
Selecting authentic artwork from across Africa may give Kalahari properties a true sense of a different continent, but importing that artwork can pose challenges. “We are missing a container,” Lucke said on the resort’s opening day. “It's still at the port. That happens on every job, you know—getting everything in from Africa and [waiting for it] to get cleared in customs.”“We have a couple of really amazing pieces that we can't show our grand opening guests,” Nelson added. Among the missing pieces is a tree of life sculpture carved with images of families. “It’s one piece of wood, 40 feet tall, all hand carved—and it's sitting in a shipping container and it's driving us crazy.”