Neighborhood Story
In choosing the right brand for the hotel, the Portman team got term sheets from several companies but ultimately felt most comfortable with Hotel Indigo. “We had an opportunity to give our designers the flexibility to shape a space, as they see fit, without the limitations that come with major [brands],” Pinkham says. Hotel Indigo combines the individuality of a boutique hotel with the benefits of InterContinental Hotels Group’s powerful distribution, loyalty, and sales platforms. The brand touts the fact that no two properties are alike; each is designed to reflect the local culture, character, and history of the surrounding area. Portman Holdings has found the formula so attractive, the company is currently developing another Hotel Indigo in Denver.
Hotel Indigos take every opportunity to share their local, neighborhood story with guests. That brings us back to the legacy of John Portman that surrounds 230 Peachtree. Naturally, Portman was the neighborhood story. In addition to the sculpture on the plaza, Portman’s abstract expressionist paintings hang on the ground floor. Area rugs in the guestrooms are custom made from digitized images of those paintings, and the headboard wallcoverings depict the shape and structure of the building. (The rooms are even painted Portman White, a color from Sherwin-Williams.) The meeting rooms are named after surrounding neighborhood streets—Portman, Turner, and Young—and feature supergraphic-style murals with local references. “When you go to a hotel, you don’t want to be in the same box in Anywhere USA, you want to be able to identify with, where am I? A lot of that is alleviated by being in a unique property,” Halverson says.
On entering the lobby, guests are welcomed with a floating glass staircase. Through the stairs, one can see the Midnight Sun-style bar and restaurant, JP Atlanta. “As you enter the ground floor, the space unfolds itself. It’s not a series of rooms, it’s a series of vistas, if you will,” Halverson says. Portman’s design language emphasizes scale and proportion, and he often refers to the modular. “He also says nothing can be arbitrary,” Halverson says. “Everything is extremely well thought out and is in certain positions, and placed in very specific relationships intentionally.”
The bar is a perfect example of Portman’s signature style. In his original Midnight Sun bar, patrons would walk up two steps to sit in a regular chair—not a barstool—and be eye-level with the bartender. Because of ADA requirements, JPA couldn’t replicate that exact setup in the Hotel Indigo. But Portman insisted on recapturing the same experience. To achieve that dynamic, JPA had to cut the floor, drop and reengineer it, put in extra structure, and repour a slab. The glass canopy piece above the bar lowers the larger volume of space to create the effect of a room within a room. “It creates a more intimate space that adds a comfort level,” Halverson says. “It’s very humanistic in that respect of how the user experiences and interacts with the space.”
Even though the hotel appears compact, compared to the soaring atriums and long, glassy elevators of Portman’s Marriott Marquis and Hyatt Regency, it has a lot going on. Regardless of project size, for Portman it always comes down to individuals and their experience as they walk through the building, Halverson says. “When you touch the handle of the front door, that’s basically your handshake with the project,” he says. “So from that moment, you need to influence the visitor.” And the Hotel Indigo Atlanta Downtown is worthy of a handshake.
