The Sheraton Chapel Hill has just undergone an 18-month, $15 million renovation. Now, following delays stemming from the pandemic, the Chapel Hill hotel off Fordham Boulevard and just five minutes from Franklin Street is more than ready to welcome guests.
Walking through the sliding glass doors of the Sheraton Chapel Hill, guests will immediately be greeted with a large, open lobby – complete with a coffee shop, restaurant, bar, conference room space and even soundproof booths to take important phone calls.
The inside of the Sheraton, featuring the bar on the right, dining tables center and the soundproof booths on the far left. (Photo via Mark Nelson)
“The plan and the design is for it to be kind of a public square for the hotel,” said Mark Nelson, the corporate director of sales and marketing for ATMA Hotels. “So, imagine like the Pit on campus. They want this to be the public square, the central focal point of the property.”
Common space in the Sheraton lobby with the bar behind. (Photo via Mark Nelson)
While the Sheraton was bought by Chapel Hill’s ATMA Hotel Group in May of 2019, the renovation of the hotel was a long time coming. Prior to the $15 million investment, Nelson said the hotel was looking more outdated with a few lingering remnants of the 80s.
“If you imagine your grandparent’s house or something like that, just really crazy bright colored carpeting, lots of orange and mauve and brown,” Nelson said. “I think in its heyday, it was quite the place. But over the years, I think it just became harder and harder for folks to sink money into it.”
Gerry Cohen remembers exactly what the Sheraton, formerly known as the Europa, used to look like. He had his wedding reception there in March of 1982. At that time, Cohen and his wife were the first people to sign a contract for a function.
“The reception dinner was on one floor and a floor down there was dancing,” Cohen said. “And there was a bar. I remember vividly it was the day of the 1982 ACC basketball finals between Carolina and UVA and my brother, who had just graduated from Carolina, came in about every 15 minutes to announce the score.”
Now, the refurbished hotel boasts 20,000 square feet of event space to host even more weddings and events in the years to come. Some ballrooms can accommodate up to 600 people. Additionally, having reopened in September of this year, this event space also serves as a gathering place for UNC Athletics. Nelson said UNC Football has spent every home game at the hotel since the season started.
Outside of hosting UNC Athletics teams, including UNC Baseball, the Sheraton Chapel Hill works to incorporate Carolina into every facet of its space – whether it be pictures of the belltower in guests’ rooms or even old blueprints of the university hung on common room walls.
UNC décor in the Sheraton lobby, featuring baseball homeplates with a map of Chapel Hill on them. (Photo via Mark Nelson)
“With some of the branded hotels, like a Sheraton or Marriott Hyatt, you don’t really get a lot of local flavor,” Nelson said. “It doesn’t really tell you much about Chapel Hill or San Francisco or wherever. So, we really wanted to bring in some of the local items of interest – whether that’s photography or it’s something related to the university.”
While there are 700 Sheratons globally, the Sheraton Chapel Hill is one of the first 10 hotels to be revamped with this new, technologically advanced design. All 172 guest rooms across four floors include numerous charging stations, large flat screen TVs and even electronic standing desks.
Sheraton bedroom, featuring large TV and a standing desk table in the back right. (Photo via Mark Nelson)
Since the Sheraton reopened its doors after 18 months of renovations, Nelson said they are working on decreasing hotel vacancies. Even with an expected uptick during football home games, he said the hotel is still only half full on weekends.
As business travel picks back up, however, they hope to be up and running at full speed by April of 2020. Plus for locals like Gerry Cohen, longtime residents looking to experience a piece of Chapel Hill’s history might be just what the hotel needs.
“I’m looking forward to coming by there and taking a look,” Cohen said. “[It’s] a good excuse to come by and perhaps have dinner there again. It’s always been a great facility for Chapel Hill and, coming up on 40 years since we booked a reception there, they were very nice folks that ran the facility back then, and I’m sure it’s in good hands now as well.”
Lead photo via Mark Nelson.
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