Hal Fairbanks, project manager and director of acquisitions for Historic Restorations Inc. — the New Orleans firm that plans to turn the Threefoot building into a hotel — met last week with The Meridian Star’s editorial board.

Fairbanks talked about his company’s intentions to buy the Threefoot building and what will happen during the next few months.



The Meridian Star: Now that the city has closed on the Threefoot building and things seem to be in place, what comes next for the project?



Hal Fairbanks: We are just starting now. For us, the first step is to find out if someone will agree to sell us the building and to have a deal to work with the city cooperatively because on these types of projects you need to work together in public/private partnerships to make a project a success. We have that agreement, which was ratified (Aug. 14).

Now we are beginning to go through and do our due diligence on the building. We met (Monday) with the contractor who was working with the previous development team, Mike Harrell, with Harrell Construction. We were walking through with some of our senior construction people from our St. Louis office and we are trying to get a handle on exactly what we are going to build there and what the total project cost will be including acquisition of other parcels that might be necessary to do the full project.

Like, for instance, there is the garage behind it and there has been talk of expanding the Threefoot building. Right now, it only has one stair so there is some discussion of where you would put another stair.

There has also been discussion of needing to compliment the meeting space at the Riley Center with a large banquet function space. In the Threefoot building that would be difficult to incorporate into as an adaptive reuse because all the existing columns that hold up the building, and so new construction may be a good way to build in that component.



The Star: The Threefoot went up in 1929 and the Empire State Building went up in 1931. Place it in history in terms of architecture.



Fairbanks: It is certainly one of the early sky scrapers of America. In how sky scrapers went, at the turn of the century it was the same time that Art Deco was coming about, so there was a period when you had these eclectic or Art Deco sky scrapers during the 1920s and then after that they went to a more classical kind of architecture.

So this is one of those rare examples of a high rise late in the Art Deco period with all the curve linear forms like Art Nouveau, or when Deco was going into Nouveau.

We did a similar building to this one in Ft. Worth, Texas, that became a hotel. It was originally the Black Stone Hotel, it had Deco friezes around the building and similar construction. It was about 20 stories poured in place concrete with steel reinforcement. We actually reproduced some of the friezes from the outside of the building to use as interior decor.



The Star: What, if anything, do you know about the friezes on the Threefoot?



Fairbanks: We haven’t looked into that yet. We are looking for as-built drawings of the property or any kind of existing drawings that may be out there.



The Star: Is your goal to restore it to the way it was?



Fairbanks: We call ourselves HRI Properties, which is a name for all of our group of affiliated companies: the real estate development company, the property management side of our business and our construction management and design group. But originally, the first entity we found was called Historic Restoration Inc., and I think what we’re planning to do is more of an adaptive reuse of a historic building, which would imply that some things need to be changed to fit the new use.

But what we would do is try and save as much of the building that didn’t need to be changed as we could, especially the decorative elements and the things that would be seen from the public areas of the building during its heyday.

Without new construction, it would be a relatively small hotel, maybe 100 to 110 rooms, but certainly on the upper floors there would be the possibility to locate suites, hospitality suites or bigger rooms. We would probably be looking for opportunities to do that here like if you could have a hotel suite up there that lets out onto a patio 15 stories up. That would really be something else.



The Star: What do you foresee happening with the forest of telecommunication devices on top of the Threefoot?



Fairbanks: It is not the ideal situation. It is certainly difficult to work around, and I think there can be some hazards if you get too close with them in terms of microwave frequencies and that sort of thing. I am not exactly sure what we are going to do there.

I understand there is a long term lease in place so I don’t know whether we could seek to buy it out or work with other measures. I haven’t seen a copy of the lease yet. We will have to find out who the lessee is and start a dialogue with them and play it by ear as we move forward.



The Star: Do you envision any retail shops?



Fairbanks: Only in conjunction with hotel use. There’s not a lot of square footage there once you put in all the functions for a hotel that you need for back of house: administrative services, kitchens, and you are going to run out of space real quick on the first floor.

We were discussing the possibility of a new addition there, like locating a ballroom facility on the second floor because of the difficulties of putting everything we need on the ground floor.

Things we would look at would be maybe a coffee shop or a restaurant. Both of those are very likely, certainly a restaurant is likely in conjunction with the hotel — probably on the ground floor. We like to do ground-floor pedestrian-level retail and commercial space. That is something we always try to do and it helps create an active street life in the area.

Usually when we do that, we set aside a fairly generous budget for tenant build-out allowance. We try and get a national credit tenant, but at the same time we try to work with locals and we are willing to bootstrap a business to help get them in there and work with them on the financing so that they can come in and open up an operation.

Right now, we have not done our own space planning and there is a lot of stuff that needs to go in there for the hotel. When we’re done with the stuff for the hotel then we look at what makes sense for the community and usually ground-floor retail is something we try to do.



The Star: What kind of brand do you see for the hotel?



Fairbanks: We have been debating it. Our first thought was a Hilton Garden Inn, but I know they are building one here, so I think it is restricted because of proximity to the location. We would consider other similar brands, like Courtyard by Mariott or other upscale focus-service brands. There are a couple of newer brands out. We would also consider doing a full service hotel, but that is likely to increase the cost and therefore the necessary public sector participation in the project.



The Star: Was there any incentives offered by the city or anything in particular that attracted you to this building?



Fairbanks: I think the main thing (the city) is providing that makes it attractive to us is strong leadership and a commitment to the project. We know with that we have a partner that we can work with if we do have needs. Subsidy beyond GO Zone incentives, new market credits and both state and federal historic credits is likely, but until we start crunching the numbers, we are not going to know exactly what that would require. It might be a tax abatement or some sort of Tax Increment Financing (TIF) participation.



The Star: Would you retain ownership or would you resale it at some point?



Fairbanks: We are building for our own portfolio so eventually we will sell it.



The Star: So these next 14 months are about design. Are there any foreseeable problems that would prevent the project from happening?



Fairbanks: We are not a speculative investment company. We come in and work collaboratively with the city to achieve goals related to some high profile redevelopment in the city that will turn around a neighborhood. If we cannot do it, we do not want to buy the property and hope it will go up in value; we want to look for a project we can make work.