Albany City Commission takes action on proposed downtown hotel, two theater renovation projects

ALBANY – A number of downtown projects are on the Albany City Commission’s radar, including the holy grail of them all in the form of two vacant landmarks that developers are trying to revive as a hotel project.

Two historic theaters are also among the ongoing efforts downtown and were under discussion this week.

On Tuesday, commissioners took another step in the saga to transform the former Water, Gas & Light building at the corner of Pine Avenue and North Washington Street and former Davis Brothers Department Store/Albany Herald location across from it in the intersection into a hotel.

Bethesda, Md.-based Woodmont Lodging has developed plans for the former WG&L building as The Gordon, borrowing from the original name of the building as the Hotel Gordon, which was constructed more than 100 years ago.

The commission approved a purchase agreement with the Downtown Development Authority (DDA) of Albany to allow the organization to have control of the buildings at 205 and 207 Pine Ave. and the former Herald building at 126 N. Washington St.

The transfer will allow for an application to a U.S. Housing and Urban Development loan guarantee program for funding the hotel project. The HUD grant guarantee is one tool developers are utilizing to help deal with the unavailability of state historic tax credits, Downtown Albany Director Lequirica Gaskins told commissioners.

The historic tax funding was among several expenditures approved by the Georgia General Assembly that were axed by Gov. Brian Kemp in the state’s 2026-2027 budget to cut spending.

“There are contingencies in the (plans),” Gaskins said. “Section 108 is one of these contingencies.”

Under the action approved by the city, the DDA would be the party designated to sell the property to Woodmont, which has indicated that it needs control of the buildings to move the project forward.

The commission’s vote allows for the DDA to have site control and negotiate and approve a sales price with the developer. The purpose of the move is to streamline the sales process and avoid delays caused by avoiding the process of negotiating through the city.

Woodmont is the third group to take a stab at developing a hotel project downtown. The first fell through when the principal in the group became ill, and officials said that the second was related to a lack of financing available for hotel projects coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The current developer’s plans are for branding the hotel as a Marriott Tribute, the mid-market boutique designation for the brand. It envisions an 80-room facility named The Gordon as a traditional hotel and The Herald House with larger rooms and kitchenettes geared toward travelers staying a week or more.

Across Oglethorpe Boulevard, the commission is looking to rejuvenate the Ritz Theater, which opened in Albany as a theater venue for black audiences in the historic Harlem district.

The commission approved the use of special-purpose local-option sales tax (SPLOST) funds for the expenditure of up to $4.3 million in SPLOST and HUD community project funding grants for the renovation project.

Barber Contracting Co. of Moultrie will be the contractor for the project. The company was one of five that tendered proposals.

The bid was less than the $4.9 million estimate for the project, Macon architect Gene Dunwoody/Beeland Architects told commissioners, but there could be some unforeseen additional costs when working on a building of that age.

“I would recommend on any historic building (that) you carry a contingency,” he said. “There are surprises on projects that you don’t know about.”

The theater was renovated during the early 1990s, the architect told an Albany Herald reporter outside the commission meeting room. That project included the theater and an annex, which also is part of the current work but will not be as elaborately treated as the theater itself.

“We’re taking the original building back to, hopefully, it’s glory days,” Dunwoody said. “One of the cool things about the project is we are going to restore the balcony. It’s going to have a balcony, so it’s going to be super cool.”

The building can be used for dance events and concerts and events that do not require the amount of space available at the city’s Municipal Auditorium, Gaskins said.

At the 127 N. Jackson St. Albany Theatre building, the job at hand is figuring out if the burned-out rear section of the building can be demolished while retaining the less-damaged front of the building that faces Jackson Street.

The commission approved a $2 million expenditure from SPLOST funds to allow for exploring the condition of the building, to get an estimate of the costs for partial demolition and contamination removal, and begin stabilization. Environmental engineers have identified asbestos in the structure, and there is damage to a chimney that is a potential hazard.

The rear portion of the building was heavily damaged in a Jan. 4, 2018 fire that killed one person.

One commissioner advocated tearing down the structure.

“This is an unstable hazard in our community,” Commissioner Diana Brown said. “Why are we going to spend taxpayers’ dollars when we could tear it down and remove the hazard? I understand it’s a historic building.”

Demolition will require removing contaminants, Mayor Bo Dorough said, so some of the work will be of value whatever the final disposition is of the building.

“Obviously, we’ve got an eyesore,” he said. “We’ve got a dilapidated structure. We are now learning new information and that material has been determined to be contaminated.”