Collegiate Times

The Holiday Inn located on Prices Fork Road in Blacksburg will be seeing some significant changes in the coming months as the current hotel will become luxury hotel-condominiums.

"We are converting the current rooms into luxury condo units but it will still be a hotel," said Shivon Dosky, a managing partner with Collegiate Inn Properties. "But this is a different concept."

Collegiate Inn Properties is responsible for this change, and, according to Collegiate Inn representatives, this idea came from the fact that Virginia Tech alumni have trouble finding places to stay when they visit the university during football season.

"My business partner and I are Hokies and we always wanted to go to the games but we could never find a place to stay, and if you buy a house you have to leave it empty with the exception of seven games in a year," Dosky said. "This hotel-condo concept will provide alumni with what they want: a place that will take care of them and make their lives easy."

Some of the rooms that are currently for sale price within the $119,900 to $129,900 range. If a person decides to purchase the suite, then they are allowed access to their room whenever they desire. In addition, with the hotel-condo option in place, the owners can rent their rooms to guests when they do not want to use them.

"We're releasing them in phases. Right now there are 48 rooms ranging from $119,900 to $129,900," Dosky said. "All rooms will be purchased fully furnished, so there will be an additional price of $15,000. These rooms are really designed to provide guests with luxury accommodations."

These hotel-condos will provide clients with some convenient amenities, including babysitting services, game transportation as well as room service. These new condos will also offer guests new 42-inch LCD televisions, granite counter tops and quick Internet access.

"We provide some phenomenal amenities," Dosky said. "The rooms will be absolutely beautiful."

The transition from the current Holiday Inn establishment to the new hotel-condo complexes is will appear to be quite seamless.

"I suspect this transition will be very smooth," said Wayne Arrington, the general manager of the Holiday Inn. "By the end of all this we should end up with the best rooms in the area."

The Holiday Inn will never actually close due to construction, since most of the work that is going to be done is simply providing upgrades to the Holiday Inn.

"Most of what we will be doing will be upgrading and new furniture," Arrington said. "This construction will not disturb guests at all."

The current Holiday Inn staff will keep their jobs and aside from the hiring of a few more staff members, the only legitimate change that will be coming to the Holiday Inn will be the owners.

"The only difference between what we're doing and how the hotel currently operates is that we'll have multiple owners who each own a room, and when they are not there then we will put their rental unit into the hotel system," Dosky said.

Collegiate Inn Properties is currently selling the condo rooms, which will go under contract this May.

"We are taking reservations now in section one which consists of 48 rooms, and we will take 50-70 reservations because people will presumably change their minds," Dosky said. "But in May contracts will be drafted and the rooms will be purchasable in June or July."

Collegiate Inn Properties maintains that this project will be a positive addition to the Blacksburg community.

"This is a luxury condo-hotel," Dosky said. "The key point we're pressing is that this is luxury living on demand, I think this will be a great project for Blacksburg."