A 115-year-old building at downtown Asheville’s southern entrance will become a boutique hotel next year.
The Flora Sorrell Boarding House at 100 Biltmore Ave. is the latest renovation by the GBX Group, a Cleveland-based company that has taken on 22 Asheville projects in recent years. Built in 1911, the structure has hosted guests ever since — first as a boarding house operated by Flora McDonald Sorrell, and most recently as the Gray Rock Inn.
In partnership with Asheville-based Buchanan Construction and Carleton Collins Architecture, GBX aims to keep many of the house’s historic features intact. Jeff Prioreschi, the company’s president of development, said its stone and brick exterior will be cleaned up and restored to its original state. The
interior will retain its fireplaces, stairwell, and wood floors.
The “Bunkum Stone” will also keep its current location. The tongue-in-cheek marker, placed in the building’s front yard, commemorates former U.S. Rep. Felix Walker. The congressman’s tiresome speeches on behalf of Buncombe County in 1820 were the origin of the term “bunkum,” which Merriam-Webster defines as “insincere or foolish talk: nonsense.”
The biggest changes will be to the floor plan. Instead of the current model of shared bathrooms, each of the 10 new hotel rooms will now have its own bathroom. The plan is to create three studio rooms, five one-bedroom units, and two two-bedroom suites.
“It’s a small, intimate, boutique hotel,” Prioreschi explained. “Ten rooms isn’t big, but we think it fills a niche because it’s more suite-oriented.”
The hotel’s interior spaces will get touch-ups courtesy of designer Tim McLendon, including a second-floor lobby with a musical theme meant to honor the nearby Orange Peel venue. Renovations to the second-floor porch, Prioreschi added, mean guests could sit outside and hear concerts from across the street.
As the Gray Rock Inn, the building housed a mix of short-term renters and longer-term tenants; in 2020, it was featured by the nonprofit Green Built Alliance as an example of unsubsidized affordable apartments due to its shared housing layout. Prioreschi said all long-term residents were able to relocate to another GBX property.
GBX aims to have the Flora Sorrell house ready for hotel use by next fall, said Prioreschi. Nightly rates are expected to run around $150 for studio units and $300 for suites.
Daniel Walton is the City Government Watchdog Reporter for the Asheville Citizen Times. Email him at dwalton@citizentimes.com, and connect with him on social media through Facebook, Instagram, or Reddit.
This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Historic Asheville boarding house gets new life as boutique hotel
