Vacant since the 1970s, Hotel Petersburg is about to make the comeback of the year when it reopens its doors on December 5. It’s the latest sign of progress for a city long beleaguered by economic woes and government dysfunction but that has in recent years mounted a rebound campaign aided by state funds and buoyed by lawmakers’ and residents’ efforts towards Petersburg’s revival. 

First opened in 1904 as the Shirley Hotel before it expanded and became The Hotel Petersburg in 1916, the building was once a social centerpiece in the city – holding dances, entertaining traveling businessmen, and hosting luncheons for women’s clubs. Evidence of the building’s storied past is laid out via photos and newspaper clippings on the hotel’s website and depict it as “a great hub for the community.” 

“This was the place to be,” said Paul Cooper, Chief Executive Officer of Retro Hospitality, the management company running the hotel. His group was also behind Richmond’s Quirk Hotel. “These buildings have a great story and a history.”

But starting in the late 1960s and through the early 70s, a series of fires permanently closed the hotel. The city attempted to purchase the building in 1975 with a goal of renovating it into a new city hall, but the hotel remained closed until Dr. Nat Cuthbert, a native who works as a diagnostic radiologist, bought it in 2017.

“I thought that it had potential as apartments, and that would have been far, far easier than a boutique hotel,” said Cuthbert. “But the city didn’t really want to go in that direction. The mayor convinced me that a hotel would be a good use.”

Mayor Sam Parham said a boutique hotel is long overdue in the city.

“It took over $23 million to get that old Petersburg Hotel renovated and back open,” said Parham. “It’s part of us growing our tourism base here and having a place for people to come and visit and spend the weekend in Petersburg.”

The hotel boasts 64 rooms, over 2,000 feet of meeting space, a rooftop lounge and full-scale restaurant. It has been deemed a member of the Historic Hotels of America program, overseen by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

Boosting tourism is one of Petersburg’s big goals. Rich with Revolutionary and Civil War battlefields, and with an upcoming focus on highlighting the contributions of Black residents by transforming the McKenney Library into an African American history museum, plus the upcoming multi-use Fall Line Trail and a future casino in the works, Petersburg is positioning itself to rake in more tourism dollars. 

“Petersburg probably owns more tourist attractions than most localities,” says Joanne Williams, the city’s director of communications, tourism, marketing and government relations. “We actually own Blandford Church, which is our number one historic attraction,” Williams said, in reference to an 18th century house of worship that became a prominent Civil War-era landmark. “We own Center Hill Museum,” Williams added, a historic mansion that hosted three American presidents and was featured in Steven Spielberg’s 2012 feature film “Lincoln,” much of which was shot in Petersburg.

The city also owns the Exchange Building, Union Station and the Southside Depot, which is undergoing a $3 million renovation and will become the locality’s main visitor center. Citing a 2009 study by the National Park Service, Williams said the depot transformation could attract about 40,000 visitors to the city.

Hotel renovation funding, Partnership for Petersburg contribution

The hotel renovation project received a total capital investment of $23 million through the Commonwealth of Virginia’s Tourism Development Financing Program, which helps finance large scale programs, according to a Governor’s press release. Another $2.2 million in gap financing is also coming through the Virginia Tourism Corporation as well as a loan through the Virginia Small Business Financing Authority. The hotel is expected to net a $675,000 tax benefit in its first full year of operation.

That financing was made possible by Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s Partnership for Petersburg, an unusual and extensive collaboration between the state and local governments that has been a major catalyst of the city’s renewal.

Parham said Youngkin’s administration helped the city secure the Virginia Tourism Corporation grants, which city leaders had tried and failed to receive previously. 

“For so many years, the VTC would tell us, ‘We’re not sure if Petersburg is a sound investment. We’re not sure if it will work,’” said Parham.

The Partnership for Petersburg initiative, which started two years ago, sought to bring what the governor called a “holistic approach” to helping reinvigorate the city by focusing on improving schools, healthcare and getting major businesses to open. The Partnership also helped the city win a variety of grants and private funds. 

“They have given us so many of the necessary resources for us to push the city of Petersburg out of a lot of the challenges that we’ve been having to get development started,” said Parham. “[The] Hotel Petersburg lay dormant for 50 years and for so long, we weren’t able to get the necessary funding to pull off a development of this magnitude.”

The program has helped the city land roughly $81 million dollars total, according to the Governor’s press secretary Christian Martinez. That figure does not include a private commitment of $100 million for the new Sycamore Grove development, which will be a mixed-use development featuring the city’s first full-line grocery store.

“I’ve never seen a governor try to do as much to help Petersburg help itself as this administration has,” said hotel owner Cuthbert. 

The rebirth of the hotel comes at a time when the entire city is also experiencing a renewal and an influx of growth. Many pharmaceutical manufacturing businesses, such as the recently opened Phlow, have made the city home.

S&P upgrades Petersburg’s bond rating to AA-, reflecting financial resurgence

Other advances the city is seeing include a bump in access to healthcare for residents, with a mobile healthcare unit, a maternal health hub, and a planned medical treatment center. Plus, a recent multimodal transit center has opened and the city’s financing possibilities were just improved with a boost in its bond rating on the S&P Global Ratings scale, which allows the city to seek more government bonds because they are now being seen as reliable when paying them back. 

Renewed vision for the city 

More than 33,000 people call Petersburg home, with the majority identifying as Black or African American, according to the most recent United States Census. Poverty has been a persistent challenge, with a poverty rate hovering at 22.2%, more than double Virginia’s poverty rate of 10.2%. And income levels aren’t as high as the rest of the state: While Virginia’s median income level is $89,931, Petersburg’s comes in at $46,930. 

Petersburg also recently ranked as one the least healthy cities in the state and nation, according to County Health Rankings & Roadmaps. The city has been associated with high rates of violent crime, according to statistics by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, but overall, violent crime has decreased over the last decade. 

For the past several years, developer Dave McCormick — a former Richmond resident — has bought and redeveloped old buildings in the downtown area, turning them into loft apartments, opening Demolition Coffee and starting Trapezium Brewery. He acknowledged Petersburg’s checkered past but said it shouldn’t define its future.

“Every city has these issues. But in my experience, none of that is true. It’s a beautiful, amazing place to be downtown,” McCormick said. The revival of the city’s namesake hotel aids Petersburg’s evolution, he said. 

“The brand of Petersburg will start to change and it’ll stop being that narrative about all the bad things happening. It’ll start to really be about all the good things happening.”

All the growth and focus on Petersburg has given longtime resident James C. Davenport more hope for an area of Virginia that he says isn’t always shown in a positive light. He lives in the city’s historic district and served as president of the Historic Petersburg Foundation in 1986. 

“The hotel is a beautiful success indicator,” Davenport said, adding that he hopes Petersburg’s momentum will attract new residents. 

“We have gone through a lot of things that other cities (have) recently gone through. We should be a champion on telling people how to survive with very little. Because we did it.”