This ambitious hotel renovation project will be funded on Blockchain
Rex CEO Peter Rex and Hotel Ella at 1900 Rio Grande Street (Google Maps, LinkedIn)
Central Austin’s historic Hotel Ella is undergoing a major renovation, and the company behind the project plans to raise funding for it via blockchain technology.
The plan from developer and real estate technology company Rex would quadruple the number of guest rooms and add a range of exclusive amenities. The ambitious renovation project will be funded through a blockchain token with a minimum investment of $ 1000.
The current 47-room Hotel Ella is anchored by the historic Goodall Wooten Mansion. The Greek mansion in Rio Grande Street was built in 1898 and was a wedding gift to Dr. Goodall and Ella Wooten. The socially prominent family owned the property until the 1940s, when the building was sold and operated in various ways such as student housing, drug rehabilitation facilities and hotels. It was named the National Register of Historic Places in 1975.
In 2013, it was picked up by Stuart McManus, founder of the Austin-based private equity firm Crystal Lake Capital, which turned it into Hotel Ella. During the Covid-19 pandemic, the hotel’s revenue fell from $ 6.8 million in 2019 to $ 2.6 million in 2020. But that did not deter CEO Peter Rex, who bought the historic property from McManus for $ 26.7 million in November 2021. .
Rex says he intends to preserve the Goodall-Wooten Mansion as it is, while adding a “Paris-level” gourmet restaurant, a cigar and Scottish bar and a wine bar in the basement. However, the rest of the hotel will be demolished to make way for the expansion, he says, which will include a roof garden and underground parking.
Rex also plans to implement voice recognition systems in the rooms and add an in-room concierge with artificial intelligence.
Although Rex said he hopes to start the renovation “as soon as possible”, he has not revealed an exact timeline for when the project can start – possibly due to the project’s unorthodox way of obtaining funding.
The Hotel Ella project will be tokenized on a blockchain, which means that accredited investors can buy fractions of equity in the property through Rex’s OwnProp tokenization platform.
Back in November, when Rex bought the hotel, he told a local Austin news station that OwnProp wanted to “democratize access” to commercial real estate, so that people could buy and sell parts of the property just like trading shares in companies.
The app is currently only open to accredited investors who meet certain SEC requirements, but Rex says he ultimately wants to open up tokenized investments for everyday investors – for example, so that employees at Hotel Ella can invest in the property without having to meet the current minimum requirement at $ 1000.
Rex’s obsession with Austin began in 2020 when he moved the company’s headquarters from the west coast to the capital of Texas. Shortly after, he went full Texas and bought more than 1,000 acres of ranch land in the Llano area.
“I want to embrace what Texas is,” Rex told the Austin Business Journal in February.
Rex is also a regular at Fox Business. In April, he appeared on the channel to criticize a California proposal for a four-day work week, saying it was an example of the guidelines that led him to move his business to Texas.
