Developers pitch boutique hotel in downtown Dunedin to highlight the city's walkability
By Breanne Williams
Tampa Bay Business Journal
Published: Nov 30, 2021

The developer of the Stirling Resort and Spa, a proposed 89-unit boutique hotel in Dunedin, aims to highlight the walkability of the city’s downtown.

The hotel is proposed to lie along 1.78 acres along Main Street, Monroe Street and Douglas Avenue. It will also have a connection via two open courtyards — which will total approximately 14,500 square feet — to the Pinellas Trail. Tampa-based Founders Hospitality LLC is behind the project and will go before the Dunedin City Commission Thursday for the first reading of its design review application.

To build the hotel, a three-story office building located at the site will need to be demolished. In its place, Founders is proposing a 196,908-square-foot, three-story boutique hotel. The units would range from studios to three-bedroom suites and would also include 5,130 square feet of meeting space able to accommodate up to 264 people, a 4,459-square-foot fitness spa, 4,812 square feet of retail space and 4,458 square feet of restaurant space. The roof will have a pool, sundeck and patio bar.

The pool and spa will be open to the public on a membership basis, according to Kirk Broadbooks, principal of the project.

There will be underground structured parking on site and the focus, according to the principals of the project, would be on encouraging patrons and those residing in the hotel to take advantage of Pinellas Trail access. The underground garage will have parking for vehicles, golf carts and bicycles.

“One of the big things we are trying to do is encourage the people who are staying there to not drive around, to walk everywhere, bike everywhere,” Broadbooks said. “We want that open connection to the trail to encourage people to get out on the trail. The hotel is going to provide bikes for the guests so they can go ride around town and on the trail. We’ve got a pull off on Douglas Avenue for the city bus and the Jolley Trolley that goes around and takes people wherever they need to go in Dunedin. What we’re really trying to encourage is our guests to be able to pull up, park their car and just leave their car.”

Rene Remund, principal of the project, has lived in Dunedin for close to 40 years. He said the property has long been underutilized. He said Dunedin’s reputation of being a safe and neighborly town along with its walkable downtown has made it a perfect spot for tourists. That unique character trait is what he hopes the boutique hotel can continue to highlight.

“This is a great area, a great town and a great downtown,” Remund said. “I’ve been here a long time and it was only a matter of time before someone developed this property. People can stay at this hotel and walk around to the shops and businesses and restaurants, both what we provide and what the rest of the community has to offer.”

The city requires a certain amount of public art for these types of projects. Founders intends to have a landscape sculpture near the corner of Main Street and the Pinellas Trail, sculptural metal bike racks, “a decorative water feature separating the porte-cochere from Douglas Avenue, a decorative fountain in the southern courtyard, a tile mural on the Monroe Street facing side of the building at the corner of Monroe Street and Douglas Avenue and a tile/water/light feature on the third-floor wall that separates the restaurant patio from the interior space,” according to city documents.

Broadbooks said they also want to put a film on the windows where the spa/fitness center is that features art from local makers. Those can be swapped out; he said every year if they wanted they could get a new batch of art to display in the windows.

North Carolina-based RBA Architecture is the designer for the project. Broadbooks said they aim to close on the property in December. There are two upcoming city commission meetings on the development, but if all goes well, he said they could break ground by the end of summer 2022 and that construction would take approximately 14 months.