How is the Nittany Lion Inn progressing? What we know, including when to make reservations

Penn State’s iconic Nittany Lion Inn is inching closer toward an August/September 2024 reopening, and the company that now owns the hotel anticipates taking reservations before the end of March.

The 92-year-year-old Georgian-style hotel is undergoing more than $10 million in renovations, after the university finalized a deal earlier this year with Scholar Hotel Group to acquire both the inn and the Penn Stater under a long-term ground lease. (Terms remain confidential.) So far, the renovation of the Nittany Lion Inn remains on schedule — with more details on the changes gradually becoming public.

“It’s not going to be recognizable on the inside — in a good way,” said Gary Brandeis, founder/CEO of Scholar Hotel Group and a 1988 Penn State grad. “The outside, it’s going to be very, very recognizable because it’s going to look essentially the same. And that’s part of maintaining the historic integrity of the building.”

Construction mainly began June 1, and recent efforts have focused on the exterior of the famous building that once hosted guests such as poet Robert Frost and musician Louis Armstrong. According to Brandeis, that means power-washing, painting — and repainting — to go along with replacing the roof and windows.

The plan is to finish the exterior this month, before winter hits, and then focus on the near-empty interior in early November. When finished, Brandeis envisions a “five-star experience” that will see the Nittany Lion Inn rival the country’s top university hotels.

Food, beverage plans

When Brandeis originally sat down with the CDT in June, he still wasn’t certain whether the reimagined Nittany Lion Inn would have three or four food and beverage outlets — but that’s since come into sharper focus.

Brandeis now says there will be four such outlets, including the redevelopment and rebranding of two previous restaurants (Whiskers, The Dining Room) in addition to two brand-new spots. “Not just a paint job,” the alum added about the rebranded restaurants. “Not just new napkins and forks, and tables and chairs, but completely redeveloped from the ground up.”

The new spots will include a cocktail bar and lounge, which will be integrated into the restaurant space, and a cafe in the lobby area. That cafe would be open 15 hours a day for grab-and-go coffee, snacks, a light breakfast, lunch, etc. — with an aim to become a community space, one open to students, community members and guests alike.

No renderings of the spaces have yet been made publicly available, and have so far only been shared internally, because the designs are not yet final. Brandeis expected to make the renderings public in the coming months, sometime before taking reservations since — well — guests probably want to know where they’ll be staying, Brandeis added with a laugh.

Reservations & future plans

Scholar Hotel Group will start taking reservations sometime toward the end of the first quarter in 2024, meaning before the end of March.

A new website and marketing campaign will be launched ahead of the reservations, which will likely be for open dates in September, October and November. Brandeis told the CDT earlier this week that he does not yet know how much the average room might cost, but he previously acknowledged the Nittany Lion Inn would be priced higher than Scholar’s other hotels.

Brandeis’ company owns Hyatt Place State College, the anchor of Fraser Centre; Scholar Hotel State College in the historic Glennland Building downtown; Residence Inn by Marriott State College; and Courtyard by Marriott State College. Scholar Hotel Group also owns hotels near Syracuse University and West Virginia University.

“I will tell you that this will be the nicest university hotel in the country, in my opinion,” Brandeis said. “I think Penn State and Scholar and the community are going to have a world-class asset right on the Penn State campus, something that everyone is going to be real proud of.

“I think it’s going to be a great success for everyone — not just our company, but for the Penn State community, the university and anyone and everyone coming to the area to have such an iconic building that’s sort of redeveloped and reimagined.”

How did we get here?

The roots of the deal between Penn State and Scholar Hotel Group began to take shape around 2017, when the university implemented a task force designed to help find new sources of revenue. By 2021, a consultant was hired to “begin exploring options” involving a potential sale of University Park’s on-campus hotels — and Scholar Hotel Group then responded to the university’s public request for offers.

By June 2022, Penn State publicly named Scholar Hotel Group as its “preferred partner.” And, in March 2023, a deal was finalized for the Nittany Lion Inn and the Penn Stater Hotel & Conference Center.

“The university will continue to own the land that the hotels sit on, but the buildings would be owned by Scholar with a long-term ground lease,” Sara Thorndike, senior vice president for finance and business, explained last year. “Eventually, at the end of the long-term ground lease, the buildings would come back to be owned by the university to reevaluate operations.”

It is not known how long the ground lease might be — they typically range between 50 and 99 years — and it’s also not known how much Penn State received for the sale. A university spokesperson previously declined to release either figure, and Brandeis would only say the lease is “going to outlive me by a mile.”

“Obviously, it’s a real honor that we have the opportunity to redevelop the Nittany Lion Inn and put our little stamp on it,” Brandeis recently told the CDT. “But, ultimately, this is a university asset. It’s a community asset. So there are a lot of people looking at us, watching us and making sure we do a good job — so a lot of pressure. But good pressure, pressure that we like and we accept, meaning we know how important this asset is.”