Heritage Development Co. of Moreland Hills is moving on plans to partially check out of the hotel business at its Bertram Inn Hotel & Conference Center in Aurora.
The company is seeking construction bids from contractors and buttoning up final details for the city to start converting 70 rooms to 28 luxury condominiums as soon as this fall. Under the plan, a newer wing of the hotel added in 2004 would be recast as two- and three-bedroom luxury suites. The plan would retain 126 hotel rooms.
Iris Wolstein, Heritage president, said in a phone interview that she sees the move as a response to the way that COVID-19 has changed the world.
“We don’t do the number of conferences that we did at The Bertram,” Wolstein said. “With fewer people coming, I thought, ‘Why not convert the separate building to condominiums?’ People like living outside the city. And people are not buying (new) houses, except for ours. They are moving into smaller quarters.”
While the original plan for the boutique hotel and restaurant worked well, she said the hotel business in the eastern suburbs has suffered since the area lost the attractions for visitors with the closing of the former Geauga Lake Park in 2007 and the earlier closing of the former Sea World operation.
The condominium plan calls for a separate entrance for condominium owners from the hotel so “they wouldn’t have hotel guests traipsing through,” she said.
George Kimson, Heritage chief operating officer, said the plan will allow condo owners to use the restaurant and pool amenities of the hotel and have their own fitness center. The plan calls for construction of garages to serve the condominium community and round-the-clock security with key fob security to enter the condominiums.
“This would be attractive to young professionals and snowbirds,” Wolstein said, who want to travel without the concerns about security that go with a single-family home.
Designs by Vocon, the Cleveland-based architecture firm, show the exterior of the building would be updated to give it a more contemporary feel. Robert Benjamin, Heritage real estate director, said the plan calls for installation of porches or balconies for each suite and extensive landscaping to give the property a more residential feel.
The Heritage plan is a vastly different plan from when condo conversions first hit Lakewood’s Gold Coast of apartments in the 1970s. In that era, condo converters for the most part simply sliced up apartments as for-sale units in the double-digit interest rates of the time. More amenities in such conversions became common among downtown Cleveland condominium conversions in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
The Bertram condo plan has been long in the making. The site was rezoned to mixed-use from industrial to permit the for-sale residential units in a referendum in May 2021. The measure passed with almost 80% of the vote, according to the Portage County Board of Elections.
Aurora Mayor Ann Womer Benjamin said in a phone interview the rezoning had no strong opposition.
“I think it’s a positive direction for (Heritage) and the community,” she said. Benjamin said she believes acceptance of condominiums in Aurora is strong because there are many townhouse projects in the suburb.
David Sangree, president of the Hotel & Leisure Advisors consultancy in Lakewood, said he is certain that the Aurora market no longer supports the number of rooms the property has.
Although hotel-to-condo conversions are scarce in Northeast Ohio, he said they are common in other parts of the country.
“The Waldorf-Astoria and the Plaza Hotel in New York City have converted hundreds of rooms to condominiums,” Sangree said. “It’s unusual for a suburban property but not for an urban one.”
Two real estate agents think the Wolstein plan makes sense.
Ryan Young, principal of the Young Team real estate brokerage in Pepper Pike, said he believes it taps a growing trend in home ownership.
“The mass exodus of luxury homeowners from maintenance and responsibilities of larger homes is apparent,” Young said. “It is driving them to a high-end, limited maintenance lifestyle. More and more developments are going to go in that serve people who want to walk out their door and go on vacation and not think about the property. This is the trend today, like the McMansions were a trend years ago.”
Bob Zimmer, an agent for Keller Williams Citywide in Cleveland who represents newly built condominiums, said he believes there is a market opportunity for condominiums.
“There is a need for ownership in the multifamily space. Not more rentals but for-sale product,” Zimmer said. “There’s just not much such product. How well it does depends on how well it’s done. With (Wolstein), you know it will be upscale.”
Kimson said the condo conversion is not being considered for Heritage’s downtown Cleveland Aloft hotel.
“They’re different markets, especially in downtown Cleveland, where the Aloft is doing well,” Kimson said.
