PHOENIX—When Eric Horodas started Greystone Hotels, he set an “informal rule” to keep business close to home.
“I call it the two-hour rule,” said Horodas, who is founder, president and CEO of the San Francisco-based company.
“When you leave your front door, it doesn’t matter, you could be walking, driving, taking the train, an airplane or any other motive of transportation, I wanted everything I owned to be within two hours of my home, and I’ve accomplished that, and that’s our focus. We’re going to stay on the west coast.”
He said this rule was motivated by past experience.
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“In a prior lifetime, I was a real estate syndicator, and I was buying and selling properties all over the country. When you’re young flying around the country can be fun and exciting, but it gets tiring after a while,” he said during an interview with HNN at the 2018 Lodging Conference.
Santa Rosa, California, a city in the wine country of Sonoma County, falls within that two-hour distance. Horodas said Greystone is partnering with a developer to open a high-end, 71-room boutique hotel in the city’s downtown that will have a wine bar, ample meeting space and more. The hotel will be housed in two historic buildings purchased by Greystone, he said.
“It’s a pretty exciting project for Santa Rosa,” he said. “(It’s) also a (much) needed project as most people know Santa Rosa was quite ravaged by the (wildfires) in October 2017. There were two other hotels in town, the (Fountaingrove Inn) and the Hilton, which burned down, so we’ll be the first ‘new hotel’ to come in post-fire to Santa Rosa. The city is really excited about having us.”
Watch the video below to hear more from Horodas about the Santa Rosa project and Greystone’s plans for growth.