Commercial Real Estate Q&A

Stan Lifsey's grandfather assembled the land that is Rocky Point, today home to more than 1.4 million square feet of upscale office space and a pair of high-end hotels. To carry on his family's legacy, Lifsey, 39, and his family firm are partnering with Pinnacle Hotel Management to develop a 10-story, Marriott Autograph Collection hotel named Current, which will contain 180 rooms, 5,000 square feet of meeting and event space and a rooftop terrace. The 2500 N. Rocky Point Drive hotel also will contain an upscale restaurant, retail space by Tampa's Oxford Exchange and Buddy Brew coffee. Pinnacle, a company started in 1997 by former Marriott executive Ron Franklin and Dick Vilardo, manages more than three dozen hotels nationwide, including more than a dozen in Florida. Current will be the Tampa Bay area's second Marriott Autograph property, following Mainsail Lodging & Development's Epicurean. The hotel broke ground on March 30 and is slated for completion in late 2018.

How did the plan for Current come together?
My grandfather had leased much of Rocky Point to restaurants like Crawdaddy's and the Rusty Pelican in the 1970s. For more than 30 years they were great operations, but by 2004 some had fallen into disarray. So Crawdaddy's was demolished, and we began trying to determine what the highest and best use for the site would be. Originally, we were considering a restaurant and meeting space there, but as we saw the market turn, we thought a boutique hotel would generate higher returns and be something the community could really be proud of. As a family company we had never developed a hotel. We knew only that we had an iconic property and that we wanted to make a statement.

How did you decide that Marriott's Autograph Collection was the right fit?
We identified with Marriott's Autograph Collection brand. It's the type of hotel I often seek out when I'm traveling. What we and Pinnacle really liked about it is the flexibility and latitude they allow in the architecture and the interior design. In many ways they give you a blank slate to fulfill your vision and make an individual statement, but you also have the horsepower of their reservation system and the structure of the top hotel operator on the planet with Marriott International.