McKibbon Hospitality ramping up hotel development

McKibbon Hospitality has hired a development executive with decades of lodging experience to help it with a series of projects in its pipeline and to grow the company’s third-party development division.

Rod Radcliff joins the Tampa-based McKibbon from Hardin Capital, where he was a senior vice president, and Advent PDS, where he was president.

In all, Radcliff has overseen more than $2 billion worth of development involving 16,000 hotel rooms over the past 35 years.

At McKibbon, Radcliff will work with a team of four project managers and support staff.

“He’s an amazing talent,” says Erik Rowen, president of development and renovation services at McKibbon. “When I started in the business 20 years ago, Rod was a mentor of mine, so I am thrilled with the opportunity to work with him again.”

In his new role, Radcliff will oversee a number of McKibbon projects, including the development of the Hotel Arras and Arras Residences in Asheville, N.C.

There, McKibbon is transforming a former Branch Banking & Trust office building into a mixed-use development with 128 hotel rooms, 54 luxury condominiums and retail and restaurant space.

Work on the 19-story building, the tallest in the North Carolina city, is expected to be completed in the first half of next year.

The Hotel Arras project — together with a new 22-story AC Hotel and Residence Inn in Charlotte, N.C., which received its temporary certificate of occupancy earlier this month — comes as McKibbon is working to bolster its third-party development and renovation services division, which it split off in January.

McKibbon is currently involved with hotel projects for third party owners in Lakeland and Jekyll Island, Ga.

“We’re finding there are a lot of developers out there who need help or require specific experience that they don’t carry in house,” Rowen says. “We’re able to fill that need.”