Oklahoma’s first modular hotel will begin construction next month

NewcrestImage, a privately owned, Lewisville, Texas-based hotel development, construction, and management firm, plans to build the first hotel in Oklahoma to use modular construction technology.

The 142-room AC Hotel Bricktown, in Oklahoma City, will also be NewcrestImage’s first modular hotel. The developer has entered into a partnership with the manufacturer Guerdon Modular Buildings to produce the modules for this project.

ADG Inc. is the architect of record, and Duncan Miller Ullmann the interior designer of the five-story hotel. Metul Patel, NewcrestImage’s Chairman and CEO, describes the hotel’s accommodations as “European-inspired.”

The first floor will be built using traditional construction. The upper four floors will be built from 81 modules provided by Guerdon’s factory in Boise, Idaho. Modular production is scheduled to begin next month, and the finished modules are scheduled to be shipped, via flatbed trucks, over four days in October.

All rooms and finishes will follow AC Hotel specifications upon delivery, and be indistinguishable from the Marriott brand’s other hotels.

The hotel, which is scheduled to open in June 2017, and which NewcrestImage will own and operate, will be located next to the 13,000-seat Chicksaw Bricktown ballpark and within a few blocks of the Cox Convention Center.

(NewcrestImage is deploying conventional construction to build another hotel in the Bricktown neighborhood, this one a 135-room Hyatt Place, which will be adjacent to OKC’s Central Business District. It’s scheduled to open in late 2017.)

“Our goal has been to integrate closely with NewcrestImage in order to make every aspect of the construction process flawless and worry-free—everything from the design and build to mapping out the delivery and installation process,” said Lad Dawson, Guerdon’s CEO.

Earlier this year, BD+C quoted Dawson as stating that Guerdon had entered into an agreement to help “a large hotel chain” (Marriott, according to one knowledgeable source) build 1,000 modular hotel rooms per year. He did not provide specifics or timetables. But that same article quoted The Modular Building Institute and STR that more modular hotel construction in the U.S. is needed for hoteliers to keep up with rising demand from guests.