With a full quorum, Eatonton City Council held its final regularly scheduled meeting of 2024 on Monday night, when the first order of business was considering a request to change Eatonton’s old, abandoned jail from Public to Commercial 1 zoning.
“This would be rezoning for a contingent sale to develop this structure on a half-acre at 101 North Washington Avenue into a 12-room boutique hotel,” Eatonton City Administrator Gary Sanders explained to the council.
The motion passed unanimously, with little discussion or fanfare, much to the relief of prospective owners Todd Gruenemeier and his wife Rebecca, who were in town from Savannah for the meeting.
Todd Gruenemeier explained while attending a boutique hotel conference early this fall in Asheville, N.C., the couple found the real estate listing for the jail online and made a detour to Eatonton to check it out before heading home.
“We wanted to take a look at it right then and there. And as soon as we went through it, we called our broker,” he said. “Just walking through, I knew what it could be. My wife calls me a visionary, but there’s just so much that could be done.
“We love the fact that there are concrete floors. We love the fact that there are no load-bearing walls. We love that we will be able to pull the roof off now and make it a rooftop bar area. I think it just has so much potential.”
Gruenemeier said he expects the jail-to-hotel renovation to result in a 12-room hotel with a fenced-off pool in the rear, a small coffee shop/ bar inside, a covered but open-sided roof-top bar (open to all, not just hotel guests), and a small event space suitable for small weddings or similar events.
Gruenemeier expects the project to cost “from $1.2 million to $1.5 million, or not much more.”
With lead paint and pipes expected throughout the building but no asbestos in sight, Gruenemeier expects demolition and remediation work to progress quickly. Construction will begin next spring, and occupancy is hoped for by this time next year.
He envisions eight rooms on the second floor, four additional handicap-suitable rooms on the main floor, and “maybe even a small elevator” installed to make all areas of the hotel accessible to all guests.
Once open, Gruenemeier expects overnight rates to be “in the $200 range, because it’s going to be luxury and nice. But it will also be affordable. We think it will be an option for folks who may not want to spend the $500 or $600 a night to stay at the Ritz-Carlton but still want something nice and special.”
To make their visions a reality, the Gruenemeiers have already engaged another husband-and-wife team, Ishita Interiors, and architect Harshad Lalan, to design and build the hotel.
Gruenemeier also said he’s been in touch with local historian Jim Marshall to discuss ways to preserve the structure’s architectural and cultural histories as much as possible.
“We want people to know about the building’s unique history, so we’ve talked about doing things like saving some of the cell doors and maybe making shower doors with them, covered by opaque glass, just to preserve a little history,” he said. “We want this to be very nice but also fun. My wife wants our tagline to be ‘So much fun it’s criminal,’ or something like that, but I like ‘Locked in luxury,’ so we still have to figure that out.”