Newspaper Page Text
Perimeter Business
A monthly oection focusing on biuinejj in the Reporter News papers communities
Hotel upgrades reflects area’s growing power
Joe Earle
Peter Dunn has
returned to Atlanta to
work in the same hotel
building as he did in
the 1990s — except
now the neighborhood
has totally changed.
He oversees the new
275-room Le Meridien
hotel, the brand’s
first foray into the
Atlanta market. The
owners have invested
more than $20 million
in renovations.
By Joe Earle
For several years during the early
1990s, Peter Dunn worked at a high-
rise hotel right across the street from
Perimeter Mall. He left to manage ho
tels in other cities and returned recent
ly as general manager of a new ho
tel that also happens to be across the
street from Perimeter Mall.
In fact, his new 275-room hotel, met
ro Atlanta's first example of the Le Me
ridien hotel chain, is in the same build
ing as his earlier hotel, The Marque.
Le Meridien's owners are spending
$20 million to dress up and modernize
the place, Dunn said.
They've re-skinned the building,
added space to rooms, installed big
beds and big TVs, he said. They also
redecorated using brushed steel and
dark colors and with stylized images
of metro Atlanta and Hartsfield-Jack-
son International Airport as artwork.
And, Dunn discovered recently,
more than the name and look of the
building have changed. The first time
he went looking for his hotel, he drove
right past the entrance.
Perimeter Center had changed, too.
"I hadn't been back to Dunwoody
since I left in 1996, just before the
Olympics," Dunn said. "I drove here
and when I got off on Perimeter Center
Drive, I couldn't recognize anything."
As the Perimeter area adds restau
rants, shops and office workers, its ho
tel business is changing, too.
The recent recession pinched busi
ness travel, the mainstay of Perimeter
hotels, but local hoteliers and tourism
promoters see signs indicating the ar
ea's hotel business is returning.
"It's starting to start back," said
Brad Sturgeon, general manager of
the Embassy Suites Atlanta-Perimeter
Center and former head of the board
of directors of the Convention and Vis
itors Bureau of Dunwoody.
Scott Smith, a senior vice presi
dent of PFK Hospital Research LLC,
which studies the Atlanta hotel mar
ket, seems ready to agree.
"We think the [metro Atlanta] mar
kets are going to do well for the next
CONTINUED ON PAGE 14
Q&A: Perimeter Mall -Page 10
New Chamber opens -Page 11
Profile: Nuts N’ Berries -Page 13
Atlanta'a abun
dant supply of
shopping centers
makes the mar
ket Very compet
itive' for retailers.
That's good news
for shoppers.
Community lead
ers gathered to cele
brate the Brookhav-
en Chamber of
Commerce's official
debut reception and
awards ceremony.
Thirty years af
ter Mark and Soodi
Kick pioneered
health food grocer
ies in their neigh
borhood, their
store, Nuts N' Ber
ries is thriving.
