News And Awards

I grew up watching my dad be a professional “firefighter.” Great CEOs have a unique ability to address decisions from multiple perspectives to unlock value for everyone involved. As a CEO, you are trying to anticipate and mitigate issues before they arise while problem-solving in real-time. I witnessed my dad treat every person he encountered with respect both professionally and personally. This built the company’s reputation for decades through various economic cycles, the importance of which cannot be overstated. I also got to see firsthand what it means to truly pivot (sometimes on a daily basis). I don’t measure success in terms of always being right, it’s about working with reality to get to returns with a long-term outlook while earning respect and maintaining relationships along the way. This includes hiring with your own weaknesses in mind and having an executive team that complements each other. Mountain Shore’s conservative underwriting and financial discipline are under the purview of Ryan Reich, an astounding engineer of deal structure and financial analysis on a micro and macro level.

Amid the race for returns in the real estate industry, hotel development and operations have grown increasingly challenging from a viability perspective. Inflation, interest rates, land and labor costs, access to financing are an elusive puzzle for owners and operators while shifts in the industry take root and the economy recalibrates.

The reality is consumers are often paying more for hotel stays and getting less while preferences change. One firm successfully navigating the moment and the market with a long-term lens is Mountain Shore Properties. In a pivot towards boutique hotel development, the firm is bringing newfound enthusiasm to thoughtful hospitality experiences in up and coming neighborhoods across the country with two new openings this year in Louisville and the Hudson Valley.

We’re all spoiled for choice by the latest hotel openings across the globe — an eccentric and eclectic mix of one-off passion projects, meticulous preservations, feel-good initiatives, and affordable design gems in surprising locales. The creative minds behind them range from our favorite heavy hitters to quirky mini brands and innovative independents. As ever, we tend to steer clear of giant hotel footprints because we prefer the places with fewer than 100 rooms. As you read through this, you’ll notice a few themes emerging — sustainability, working farmland, rich color palettes, nostalgia, crazy views — and we applaud them all.

Hotel Genevieve, which opened its doors this month in Louisville’s NuLu neighborhood, would like to remind visitors that there is more to the city than bourbon and horses. “Why not make this a feminine, rich space?” mused Tenaya Hills, senior vice president of design and development at Bunkhouse, the hospitality group behind the new hotel. The rooftop bar and restaurant takes inspiration from Paris, nodding to the French king who gave Louisville its name. The lobby bursts with color (no dark wood paneling here). A grab-and-go local foods market is part convenience store, part art installation (“think 7-Eleven run through an Andy Warhol filter,” Hills says) that meanders into the Lucky Penny, a hidden pocket bar. Modern interpretations of Appalachian quilt patterns cover the corridor carpets and bedroom throws. Here, take a peek at the design that Hills calls “refined, but a bit over the top.”

Located in Louisville’s hip and affluent East Market District (also referred to as NuLu), Bunkhouse Group open their first Kentucky property, Hotel Genevieve featuring 122 rooms over six floors of a new build with decadent design and four distinct culinary concepts from chef Ashleigh Shanti.

Picture yourself on a sojourn in the Catskill Mountains of New York. Would your preferred game be Pac-Man, pickleball or backgammon? The answer could determine where you stay. Then again, with the variety of games on hand at nearly every one of the Catskills’ newest wave of stylish resorts, there should be more than one option that tickles your fancy.

Before buying a New Paltz home in 2016, I’d been visiting the Hudson Valley almost every week since 2007. At a conservative estimate, this means I’ve eaten 800 meals here. But three of the finest dinners I’ve ever enjoyed in the area came in the space of four recent weeks.

When the newest hotel in NuLu opens the week of the Kentucky Derby, a decorated chef will be at the helm.

The 122-room, six-story Hotel Genevieve at 730 E. Market St. is stacked with four different restaurant and bar concepts, all of which will be led by the James Beard Award-nominated chef Ashleigh Shanti as culinary director.

A two and a half hour drive from New York City, Camptown is a 50 room hotel located at the foot of the Catskill Mountains, just over the Rip Van Winkle Bridge. Originally built in the 1930s, it’s home to 26 log cabins and 24 hotel rooms each reimagined by Ramshackle Studio; the property, owned by development firm Mountain Shore Properties, having undergone a considerate renovation and redesign, embracing existing original architectural details, whilst punctuating the spaces with custom work created through partnerships with local artists and woodworkers.

The former Rip Van Winkle Motor Lodge in Catskill has been reborn as Camptown with extensive room upgrades, a restaurant and other improvements as part of a $14 million investment by the new owners.

And more changes are on the way.