Exclusive: See inside Fort Worth’s Crescent Hotel ahead of luxury property’s big opening
The Crescent Fort Worth, one of the most expensive luxury hotels in Fort Worth, is days away from opening, and the Star-Telegram got an exclusive tour inside.
It’s been nearly three years since Crescent Real Estate — the investment fund owned by John Goff — filed permits for a 200-room “Cultural District Hotel” on Camp Bowie Boulevard. The long-awaited Crescent Fort Worth Hotel has its soft opening Wednesday, Nov. 8, which is a bit delayed from the original plan to open in late September.
The hotel will have 100 rooms initially available on floors two and three, Robert Rechtermann, general manager of the hotel, told the Star-Telegram. All of the hotel’s available rooms are sold out this weekend for the TCU football game against UT Austin on Saturday.
During November, rooms start around $300 on weeknights and $450 on weekends, according to the hotel’s booking portal as of Thursday.
The Crescent at 3300 Camp Bowie Blvd. is near the Kimbell Art Museum, The Modern Art Museum, Amon Carter Museum of Art and Dickies Arena.
Given the location within the Cultural District, Crescent Real Estate owner Goff has said he hopes it will come to serve as “Fort Worth’s living room.”
“The Cultural District is such an important asset for the city, if not the much broader community,” Goff said. “It’s just amazing that it hasn’t had a first-class hotel in or around it. I think that time has come.”
Goff said he views the Cultural District museums as “partners” in the project.
“We want to work extremely closely together to promote each other’s businesses, and we’re very excited to be hand in hand with them as we go forward,” Goff said.
“The Cultural District is obviously world renowned,” Rechtermann said, “and being right here the owners really wanted to build a hotel that could arguably be anywhere in the world. It’s not a Western-themed hotel, like so many are. We’re really paying tribute to the arts and the community here in Fort Worth that enjoys that and visits for that.”
Creating a luxury hotel in Fort Worth is all about the guest experience from the moment guests arrive at the front doors, Rechtermann said.
Employees bustled across the property Thursday as construction workers applied finishing touches to the five-story property. Staff were training and practicing serving guests for the hotel’s opening day.
“There’s a lot of wonderful hotels in Fort Worth,” Rechtermann said. “We obviously just want to be one step above, and it all comes down to the team that we’ve hired and the service that we deliver to make people really feel like this is their home away from home.”
While only part of the hotel will be open Wednesday, the hotel will eventually have 200 available rooms, including 12 luxury suites. Rooms feature a mix of king and queen beds, lounge seating, a desk and chair, a mini bar, local art work, floor-to-ceiling windows, a refrigerator drawer and Nespresso coffee maker.
The property also features several dining options, including upscale Mediterranean restaurant Emelia’s, fine dining option Blue Room at Emelia’s, and lobby bar The Circle Bar. Preston Paine of Food Network’s “Ciao House” is the executive chef of Emelia’s. It will also feature a rooftop bar.
More than 14,000 square feet of event space span 10 indoor and outdoor venues, and a courtyard sits at the center of the hotel.
A month after the hotel’s opening, the Canyon Ranch Wellness Club is expected to make its debut. Leaders say the holistic health facility is more than what one may think of when hearing the word “spa.”
The hotel and Canyon Ranch Wellness Club are the first phase in The Crescent mixed-use development. The property will eventually include 170,000 square feet of office space and nearly 170 luxury apartments along West Seventh Street that can all access food service from the hotel.
The timeline for the project’s second phase has not yet been announced, but Goff said demand for the office space is high. Several companies within Fort Worth are already slated to relocate to the property, and some will relocate from other cities, Goff said in August.
Crescent Real Estate — which also owns the Ritz-Carlton Hotel and Crescent Court Hotel in downtown Dallas — plans to improve the streets along Camp Bowie Boulevard from Montgomery Street to University Drive in the future.
“It’s going to look and feel much richer, and the traffic will be slowed down,” Goff said. “It’s going to be more pedestrian friendly. That’s really going to be helpful to allow the restaurants, our hotel, Canyon Ranch and our office building all to interact with the Cultural District in a more safe and, frankly, beautiful manner.”
