Bats, alligators, horses, Tom Petty and Bo Diddley decorate the bedrooms of one of Gainesville’s newest hotels.
Hotel Indigo, a six-story hotel at 5020 SW 30th Lane in Celebration Pointe, is set to open mid-November, said John Goodner, the Director of Operations for the Florida Division at Hoar Construction.
Hotel Indigo’s art, architecture and more than 200 local Gainesville workers make the hotel stand out, Goodner said. The InterContinental Hotels Group, the hospitality company that owns Hotel Indigo, crafted the 140 rooms with Gainesville’s “neighborhood story” in mind.
Henry Hinojosa, the project superintendent at Hoar Construction, said each room has a brightly painted mural wall with music or nature scenes. One of the murals displays a horse trampling an alligator after a video of a stallion attacking a sunbathing alligator at Paynes Prairie Preserve State Park received 2 million views.
“Celebration Pointe is a very upscale, high-end retail development, and we wanted to tie that back into the hotel,” Goodner said.
Some rooms will cost around $130 during weekdays, Goodner said. He expects prices to increase during busier times, such as football season.
The hotel features a bar, restaurant, pool, gym, computer room and four conference rooms, Hinojosa said. Visitors walking into the hotel are greeted by circular sofas, wooden tables and a 6-foot white alligator attached to the lobby floor.
About 80 percent of the subcontractors who worked on the project live in Gainesville and Ocala, Goodner said. Car-sized boulders of limestone underneath the dirt uncovered during the excavation project were used around and in the hotel.
Larger pieces of the stone were used as landscaping features, and smaller brick-sized pieces were used on walls, Goodner said.
Hinojosa said he did not know about Gainesville’s large bat population until he saw the creatures in murals, framed photos and decorations around the hotel.
“This hotel to me is unique because of its design,” Hinojosa said. “The interior design, the murals and the music — it’s all a part of the Gainesville atmosphere.”
Contact Angela DiMichele at adimichele@alligator.org and follow her on Twitter at @angdimi
