Boutique Design - Spring 2020 - 15

Meet two hands-on CEOs who are building out passion-project hospitality platforms made for self-selecting
guests. High-performance health and ﬁtness? Social and eco-consciousness prioritized like never before?
Boutique Design's 2020 Up-and-Coming Hoteliers are masterminding concepts ﬁt for all travelers.
Welcome to the next generation of lifestyle hotels.
By the BD Staff

KEN CRUSE
CO -FOUNDER AND CEO,
SOUL COMMUNITY PLANET
SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO, CALIFORNIA

P H OTO S : S O U L C O M M U N I T Y P L A N E T

The elevator pitch: The vision for SCP-to
make the world a better place by advancing
the values of personal wellness, social good,
and the environment-is not ours. This vision
is shared by a committed and growing share
of the global population.
An investment strategy that makes the
numbers, and the conscience, work: Our
investment company (Alpha Wave Investors)
has always been a "special situation" buyer.
Our strategy is to ﬂy below the radar of the
big institutional buyers, who often have
access to cheaper capital or are willing to
be more aggressive on price. Instead, we
focus mostly on adaptive reuse deals in
secondary and tertiary markets that have
strong fundamentals, but where the assets
we're targeting are too small or messy for
large institutional buyers. We will also do
deals where our business plan for the target
property enables us to drive a better pro

forma than a traditional buyer may be able
to underwrite (e.g. by activating excess
space into new uses such as co-working and
membership-based ﬁtness). In the case of
the property that ultimately became our
ﬁrst SCP hotel in Colorado Springs [shown
here and now joined by locations in Redmond
and Depoe Bay, Oregon], I think our only
competition was a guy with a bulldozer.
We were able to get a good hotel in a solid
location at a price that equated to the land
value. We like the idea of taking properties
others may be compelled to raze and start
over, and instead recycling the assets into
viable businesses. This supports the vision of
SCP, which is to offer the conscious consumer
a holistic product that caters to individual,
community, and global wellbeing.
Why both guests and investors will stand
behind ethical consumption: Just as consumers
are embracing innovation in the lodging
space, we've been pleased to see investors also
appreciate the need for relevant innovation.
The valuations achieved recently by fresh,
non-traditional hotel companies such as Six
Senses, Freehand, and citizenM all support
the notion that investors understand the value
of appealing new brands.
Business inspiration: Companies such as
Patagonia, Trader Joe's, Toms, and Whole

Foods that prioritized doing the right thing
over short-term proﬁts, in my view. Data
shows that those companies do better over
time, as well.
Design at an approachable pricepoint: Our
eco-industrial/bohemian design aesthetic
and our skew to the younger demographic
means that customers are not only accepting
of, but they expect and appreciate, certain
unﬁnished edges and retained conditions.
Accordingly, we can save money on
renovations by keeping certain existing
elements of a property (older windows, beatup sidewalks) that are completely functional,
but which may not have exactly the right
look for a modern branded hotel. We also
save money by not putting in hard ceilings,
new ﬂooring, or even drywall in many of our
spaces when the concrete and brick actually
add to their character.
What's ahead for SCP: We are looking to
thoughtfully grow the portfolio so that we
may more efﬁciently build awareness and
serve a broader demand base. We do not
have any speciﬁc geographic limitations and
we are exploring some portfolio conversion
scenarios, where we would convert a larger
pool of well-located hotels that are currently
rate-constrained due to afﬁ liation with legacy
brands into SCP.
BOUTIQUEDESIGN.COM

https://www.boutiquedesign.com/

Boutique Design - Spring 2020

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Boutique Design - Spring 2020