Downtown plaza about to get much busier

There's already plenty of foot traffic at One City Plaza, the public square where Main and Coffee streets come together downtown.

Expect to see more later this year along the part of the plaza that leads to Washington Street.

Right now, Tupelo Honey Café and an Orvis store are along one side of that walkway, and the other side is a construction site.

Come summer, however, the developer behind the construction, Hughes Development Corp., expects outdoor dining from a new restaurant or two where a construction fence is now.

Then, sometime in the fall, the main entrance to a new hotel, the 144-room Aloft Greenville Downtown, is scheduled to emerge along the walkway.

John McKibbon, chairman of McKibbon Hotel Group, the Georgia company building the hotel, said he thinks the location in the heart of downtown is perfect for a so-called "lifestyle" hotel.

"Our guests want to be where the action is," he told The Greenville News. "They want to be where the people are. They enjoy all that activity. It's not just staying in a hotel and checking out and leaving the next day. It's really experience your visit while you're there and all the surroundings. That pedestrian count really says we're in the right place."

The hotel, scheduled to open in November on top of a municipal parking garage, will include a bar overlooking the plaza from four stories up.

McKibbon said his company is scouting local talent for a musical series at the bar, which will be called WXYZ.

He's hoping half the patrons will be hotel guests and half local residents.

"We want it to be a fun spot at night," he said.

The hotel will have lots of artwork by local artists and an outdoor pool on the sixth floor along Washington Street, along with cabana rooms, a fire pit and dog walk.

It will also have a dog adoption program similar to one at the Aloft hotel in Asheville, which McKibbon Hotel Group also owns.

A pen in the lobby will showcase a dog available for adoption, and guests will be able to take the dog for a walk in the dog walk, McKibbon said.

At the Asheville Aloft, he said, guests have adopted 17 dogs since the program began in the summer.

Robert Hughes, chief operating officer at Hughes Development Corp., said he's getting calls daily from retailers or restaurateurs interested in taking space in the development under construction, which will be called One Laurens.

The development will stretch along Washington Street, from the plaza walkway to Richardson Street, and include new office and retail space, in addition to the hotel and parking garage.

"The biggest interest we're seeing is from restaurants and retailers that want to locate in downtown Greenville and want to be part of the urban core and the pedestrian environment, and that's what we're creating here," Hughes said.