Royal Park Hotel under new ownership

ROCHESTER — The Royal Park Hotel in downtown Rochester has been sold.

Earlier this month, the Rewold Family sold the hotel to Fairwood Capital LLC for an undisclosed price.

“Money wasn’t the main factor in it. It wasn’t the reason that we did it,” said Frank Rewold, who heads up the Rochester-based Frank Rewold & Sons Construction firm. “It was just the timing and the stress on the staff.”

The hotel, located at 600 E. University Drive, will now be managed by Pivot Hotels & Resorts, a division of Atlanta-based Davidson Hotels & Resorts, which also manages the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island.

The hotel was built by Frank Rewold & Sons in 2004 for a reported $48 million.

“My grandfather, Roy Rewold, had a vision for the city of Rochester to build a luxury boutique hotel that would draw in guests from all over the world to enjoy his beloved city, and he was able to make that dream a reality. The decision to transfer ownership of the hotel was one of the most difficult our family has had to make, and one we did not take lightly,” Ashley Rewold, hotel owner, said in a statement.

The Rewold family has been deep-rooted in the Rochester community for over 100 years. After opening his business and being integral in community development and construction, Roy Rewold became the city’s first mayor.

Roy Rewold’s son, Frank, is now at the helm of the family’s construction company, Frank Rewold & Sons.

Frank Rewold said the 18 years the family has owned the hotel has been a bit of a bumpy ride.

“We took the hotel over when the initial owner went bankrupt because we had built it,” he said. “I wasn’t ever in the hotel business, and I wasn’t planning to get into it. I did it by default.”

Over the years, the hotel — like many others across the nation — faced a number of hurdles.

“We went through the recession — which was actually a depression for hotels — in 2008. We weathered the storm, which was not easy, and thought the worst was behind us, but who could have predicted the worldwide pandemic that happened the last several years, which was catastrophic for hotels and restaurants and banquets because they were hit, arguably, by far, the hardest? … That was really, really difficult to weather,” Frank Rewold said.

But the hardest part, according to Frank Rewold, was watching the hotel staff struggle.

“It was hard on the staff, which was painful for me to see. Staff were either laid off or working under very, very difficult conditions — but we got through that. Now, and you see this everywhere, the hospitality industry is still very affected by COVID from the standpoint of the studies that we did, which said about 30% of hospitality/restaurant people left the business during COVID and will never come back. … There’s just an extreme shortage of help, and to compound that, that puts extreme pressure on the people that are working, because they are working more hours with less help. So the fun was out of it,” he explained.

So when Frank Rewold was approached by someone who wanted to purchase the hotel, the timing was right for the sale.

“I really wasn’t marketing trying to sell it, I just had somebody approach me, and with all the factors there — I wanted to get back into my main line of work, which is construction. That’s just really how it played out,” he said. “It was a little bit painful. I had a lot of good people there that were there a long time and we had a great run, but I’m also hopeful that the company that took it over, which is a big company with lots of resources and lots of experience, can do some things and take it to another level there, which would be great for the community. … There will be changes there, but sometimes change is good.”

The Royal Park Hotel features 143 guest rooms, over 20,000 square feet of meeting and event space, and PARK 600 — a locally crafted restaurant offering a variety of seasonal flavors.

A representative from Davidson Hospitality Group could not be reached for comment at press time.

For more information about the hotel, visit www.royalparkho tel.net.

For more information about Davidson Hospitality Group, visit www.davidsonhospitality.com.