Downtown Boise’s latest property combines a European-style hotel and extended stay in one location

For Boise-bound travelers, it’s an amazing two-for-one opportunity. Two distinct hotels located one address.

The AC Hotel Boise Downtown & Element by Marriott is Boise’s newest entry into the expanding downtown hotel market. The facility combines a pair of highly recognizable hotel brands.

One is defined by European luxury. The other provides all the amenities and spacious room sought by those requiring an extended stay.

“We combined the two. We took all the amenities of the hotel and combined them,” said Jared Smith, a principal with Pennbridge Lodging and Capital, the joint group that developed the dual-site hotel. “One brand usually requires a higher end for certain amenities, so we just took the best of both and put them together.”

Located on Grove Street, between 10th and 11th streets, the hotel collectively offers 296 rooms. Two “awesome brands” is how Smith, a Boise native accustomed to traveling both personally and professionally, brands the unique new site.

“The AC is modern, it’s sleek. The Euro feel is great for business travelers or couples trying to get away,” he said. “It’s art centric. We put in, per requirement, a lot of art, including a lot of local art. It’s very upscale, very modern.”

The Element has its own unique luxury-defining elements for the specific group of travelers it serves.

“It’s the little sister of the Westin. It’s a fresh extended stay,” Smith said. “You get the heavenly bed, my favorite, with a full kitchen, and it’s bright and fun. [There’s] a focus on wellness and a nice gym. But at a higher tier.”

Overall, a tier that extends 16 stories, though Smith noted it’s technically only 15 stories. “No one stays on the 13th floor. It’s actually a 15-story with no 13th.”

While some may consider No. 13 unlucky, luck traveled nowhere near Smith’s career path, one built on hard work, determination and a desire to succeed in bringing the uniquely crafted AC/Marriott to Boise.

A graduate of The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, he used his experiences living on the east coast and working in private equity with Starwood Capital, creators of Starwood Hotels, to form Pennbridge with business partner Tom Lewis.

Like the hotels Smith now builds, Pennbridge was also built from the ground up. Locally, their portfolio includes the Residence Inn at the intersection of Capitol Boulevard and Myrtle Street, offering roughly 500 hotel rooms between their three hotels and two sites.

From a development perspective, starting from scratch, Smith said, is the part he enjoys the most. “I love the creation process. Almost every property we have done has been from the ground up.”

“We find most of our success to be from the ground up,” said Mike Webster, president of operations for Pennbridge. “Acquisitions are a different animal when you are taking over for someone else.

“We’re very strategic, very picky about the markets we go into, much more so than most developers out there whenever we underwrite anything.”

Including Boise, which has experienced a rise in downtown hotel development offerings in the past decade. Particularly in 2017, when a big hotel growth spurt hit the region.

“At the time the discussion was that it was too much, too many hotel rooms in downtown Boise,” Webster said. “And there was a period when we were pretty nervous about the number of rooms going in.”

Three years later, COVID, as it did globally, took up temporary residency, complicating the overall project in its own way. Getting the dual-property from start to finish turned into seven years of development, a “crazy-long project” as Smith called it.

Webster agreed, reflecting on the uncertainty caused by the pandemic at the time.

“We didn’t know what was going to happen with the hospitality industry then,” Webster said. “We shut down and closed the doors.

“Thankfully with this project we were not in one of those states that kept travel suppressed for a long time. Markets like Utah and Idaho opened up fairly quickly.”

Having just acquired the downtown property in January of 2020, each admits the pandemic created a “nerve-wracking” time for hotel developers.

“COVID hit and shut everything down, especially in hospitality,” Smith said. “It put everything into a standstill. We sat on the property for a while and wound up selling half of the block in 2021.”

“That helped as far as the financials go, but we always had the plan to build a dual property on the north side of the block,” Webster said.

With the project mothballed until 2024, Smith admits it was “difficult getting lenders excited” during that tumultuous time.

“We finally started construction in 2024,” he said. “That is when we actually put a shovel in the ground. It’s been a long process and we are very happy to now be on this side of it.”

According to both Smith and Webster, Okland Construction was nothing short of masterful in completing the project.

“They have a great team here in Boise. They were great from start to finish,” Webster said. “With operations working to prepare a hotel for opening, you need a partner willing to work alongside you when getting things done. Putting a hotel together during construction is a challenge.”

They were challenges Okland willingly accepted, devising creative ways to complete the 322,000-square-foot facility. Okland recently built Hotel Renegade, and the AC/Marriott essentially stands eight floors taller, with more than three times as many rooms.

“This was a much tighter site, less lay-down area,” said Andrew Mitzel, Okland’s Boise-based business development manager. “It changes things on the construction and safety side for what we need to do to be efficient.”

Including having to finish the site with The Boise Post restaurant perched atop the site on the 16th floor.

“That is always in the back of your mind that you have these types of complexities at the top of the structure,” he said.

Managing both the elements and potential safety issues, Okland also found another way to complete the tighter, taller site in its construction process of levels five through 14.

“We used a prefabricated structural, light-gauged wall system where we built out as much as we could at ground level before raising into place with cranes,” he said. “We did this instead of going up to that 11th or 12th story, while doing construction out in the elements in those unsafe areas,” Mitzel said.

“It’s not something you see a lot of constructions groups do. We made the decision to implement this process and it worked out really well for us.”

And then came the inspection process, also a lengthy process. According to Mitzel, Okland conducted 165 internal inspections, followed by an additional 500-plus municipal walkthroughs.

“For a project of this size, you would expect a lot of inspections,” he said. “But over 500 was a lot to manage on the schedule side in order for us to stay on point. It was a long drawn-out process working with those authorities having jurisdiction on all of our inspections and what needed to be done.”

Like any construction project, completion of a building of this magnitude requires nothing short of a joint effort between numerous parties.

“You’re dealing with the brand requirements from Mariott, and then you have Pennbridge Lodging, and our own internal things that we want to see done the right way,” Mitzel said. “Then you have the city. So everyone has an eye for what needs to be accomplished, and we all work together to bring it to the finish line.”

Plus, there were many discussions centered on the logistics of strategically placing The Boise Post restaurant at the top of the structure.

“With the location and the views we could get, we felt the rooftop was the place to go,” Webster said. “It’s very expensive to put a restaurant like this on the top floor. But we felt we could provide an experience that no other hotel can offer in downtown Boise, or maybe in Idaho.”

Plus, Webster reinforced the notion that the sweeping views offered by one of Boise’s newest restaurants is one to be enjoyed by guests, as well as anyone who calls the area home.

“As far as the location goes, we are unmatched,” he said. “The restaurant is not a hotel restaurant. Rather it is a restaurant in a hotel.

“A lot of our guests have told us that a restaurant like this with the views is something they expect to find in places like San Francisco, Nashville or Seattle.”

“This hotel is a lot of rooms. It’s a pretty gutsy move dropping about 300 rooms into this property,” Smith said. “But we’re bullish and we’ll have to assess how quickly we could potentially do another one. I adore our city and I am so proud of being here and for helping contribute to its growth.”