The former Oklahoma City Marriott, once a premier hotel but having languished for years without even a franchise flag, is set to be brought back to life with a $13 million conversion into an Embassy Suites.
The redevelopment, which also will include construction of an adjoining 95-room hotel, is being tackled by a veteran hotelier who may not be well known to the public but who has built up one of the country's largest privately owned lodging companies in the country.
Champ Patel has built a reputation that has attracted companies like Hilton to task him with launching their new Tru brand. When Fred Mazaheri purchased prime development sites in Bricktown, he teamed up with Patel to build hotels in the growing entertainment district.
Despite all this, Patel maintains a humble corporate headquarters near Will Rogers Park where he and his staff oversee operations in 23 states with a workforce of 3,400 employees.
Developer's development
As he prepared to close Thursday on his purchase of the former Marriott at 3233 Northwest Expressway, he agreed to share the story of how as a recent immigrant to America, he started with a 44-room motel in Weatherford at the start of the 1980s oil bust and is now the state's leading private hotel developer.
Armed with a bachelor's degree in chemistry and having worked a stint in a plastics factory, Patel and his wife Bhanu arrived first in California where they joined up with his brother Vasant Patel in purchasing a 32-room motel. They then moved to Weatherford where they bought the 44-room Kendall House Motel.
Jeff Penner, a longtime employee of Patel's Champion Hotels, was working his way through college when he first came to know Patel.
“Both Champ and his wife were working night and day at their hotel,” Penner said. “I was working across the street at a Best Western. I would look across the street and I would see Champ.”
A lot of people were noticing Patel. It was 1982 and immigrants from India were not a common sight in west Oklahoma.
“It was 99.8 percent white Americans,” Patel said. “If I went to Walmart, they would look at me and ask who is he? It took four years for them to get to know me. It wasn't that they didn't like me. They didn't know me.”
In those early days the Patels commonly worked 16-hour shifts cleaning rooms and manning the front desk.
“Whatever the employees were doing, I did myself,” Patel said. “And when you do it yourself, you have more respect for them. You know your employees, you know they are doing hard work.”
Earning a reputation
The days of hotels in west Oklahoma filling up with oil workers was rapidly coming to an end with a collapse in the energy industry. Patel was just getting by, but he jumped at an opportunity to contribute $7,500 to purchase a building to open a new YMCA when he was approached by former Weatherford mayor and state senator Ed Berrong.
It was a big donation for Patel, representing three months profit at his hotel. But he turned Berrong down when the longtime civic leader sought to put Patel's photo in the local newspaper.
“I was giving just to be a part of the community and be a part of Weatherford. I was a local guy and I wanted to do what others would do,” Patel said. “Money would come with heart and care.”
Berrong kept his promise not to put Patel's photo in the newspaper, but he did ensure the story was told. Penner was among those who witnessed Berrong approaching other business owners reminding them of the donation made by a minority immigrant and how if Patel could make such a contribution, they could as well.
Building a brand
The oil bust was brutal, but Patel managed to not just survive the downturn but also buy up distressed properties at discounted prices.
He struck up franchise agreements that included turning his first hotel into an EconoLodge and then buying a neighboring 72-room Tropicana Inn that he converted into a Days Inn. He then built a Hampton Inn shortly after the brand was purchased by Hilton, the start of a long-running relationship with the legendary hotel company.
As his holdings grew, Patel formed Champion Hotels and in 1995, he did his first project on Northwest Expressway converting a five-story office building into a Hampton Inn.
Throughout this growth, some of his first employees were still overseeing his earliest hotels including his original hotel in Weatherford. When the manager decided to retire, Penner said, she shared her dream of settling down in a “double-wide on an acre of land.” Patel bought the retired employee the land and the double-wide trailer.
Penner said similar arrangements were made for employees who battled cancer or who were given jobs at the headquarters when properties were sold.
“If you don't care for people, if you have a million (dollars), you won't really enjoy it,” Patel said. “Money is money. I've had a lot of employees who have worked for a long time. Not a lot leave. We are not corporate. We are family.”
Embassy ambassador
Patel knows he has a big job ahead with the Tower Hotel, which lost its Marriott flag about four years ago.
“When Marriott was there, it was doing good,” Patel said. “When they lost the name, they lost the value. Before downtown and all the hotels were built there, the Marriott was the center of the community. But they didn't put any money into it and that's why they lost the name.”
Patel estimates his total investment in the property will total about $23 million after he converts the 354-room hotel into a 215-room Embassy Suites by converting the one-bedrooms into the two-room suites required by the brand.
Patel anticipates remodeling the top seven floors and the ground floor first, then putting up the Embassy Suites flag, and then finishing the remaining floors. He then will build the new 95-room hotel on the surplus surface parking.
“The area has no high-end hotel,” Patel said. “And if you have a higher-end hotel again and you reduce the room count, you then have enough land to build another hotel.”
The approach is not new for Patel, who previously purchased an aging La Quinta, tore it down, and then built three new hotels on the site including the first Tru Hotel for Hilton.
Room boom in Bricktown
As construction starts on the Tower Hotel, Patel is preparing to start work on the first of at least six hotels planned in Bricktown.
A building permit was issued two weeks ago for a Canopy by Hilton on the former Body Works Collision Center in east Bricktown. That site was cleared over the summer and will also be home to a La Quinta, a Cambridge hotel and Best Western.
Those adjoining brands, he said, are geared toward visitors who want to stay in Bricktown, want a clean, quality place to stay but need rates slightly lower than what is offered currently. Construction will start next spring at the Canopy; he estimates work will wrap up in about 17 months.
More hotels are planned on a former lumberyard along the Oklahoma City Boulevard south of Harkins Theaters in Lower Bricktown. For now he is awaiting final drafting of a master plan for the area between Lower Bricktown and Interstate 40 that includes the sprawling former cotton mill being torn down to make way for future development.
“We own the land, it's a prime location,” Patel said. “But we want to work with the city and the development on the back side. We want to make sure everything works for us and the city. Everyone needs to work together.”
