The Georgian Terrace Hotel, the Midtown Atlanta hotel that hosted the opening gala for “Gone with the Wind,” has a new owner.
Virginia-based Sotherly Hotels said Tuesday it has acquired the historic hotel at Peachtree Street and Ponce de Leon Avenue, plus a parking deck and an adjacent parcel for potential future development, for $61 million. The seller was Fremont Realty Capital.
The Georgian Terrace stands across Peachtree Street from the Fox Theatre, and its restaurant is often a dinner stop for theater patrons and a gathering spot for an after-show nightcap. A 2009 renovation refreshed the Georgian Terrace’s restaurant, lobby, meeting space and many of its rooms.
Scott Kucinski, a vice president of operations and investor relations for Sotherly, said the company plans to continue renovations to overhaul about two-thirds of the hotel’s 326 rooms. He declined to say how much the company plans to invest.
“It will remain the iconic, independent hotel it always has been,” Kucinski said, and the name will remain the same.
Chesapeake Hospitality will take over as the new operating company, replacing Crescent Hotels & Resorts, Kucinski said, but the vast majority of the staff will be retained.
The Georgian Terrace was built in 1911, and the gala for “Gone with the Wind,” the 1939 film adaptation of the Margaret Mitchell novel, was there. The hotel was named to the National Register of Historic Places in 1986 and gained a second tower in 1991.
The property is Sotherly’s first in metro Atlanta. The company owns the Hilton Savannah DeSoto in Savannah and properties in Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Kentucky and Texas, according to Sotherly’s website.
Sotherly said in a news release that the hotel operated at average occupancy of about 72 percent in 2013.
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