Toyota North America's relocation to the Texas prairie a decade ago led to an influx of auto suppliers and ancillary businesses cropping up near the automaker's 100-acre headquarters campus in a suburb about 22 miles north of downtown Dallas.
Now, the Japanese automaker is helping to set the tone of the North Texas region in a new way with Kintetsu Enterprises Co. of America, a subsidiary of one of Japan's largest holding groups that manages 6,000 hotel rooms in the United States and Japan. The company is planning to begin construction on a long-awaited luxury 14-story hotel less than a mile from Toyota’s North America headquarters in Plano, Texas.
The 217-room Miyako Hybrid Hotel Plano, designed by Gensler, is in the design phase, and construction is expected to begin next year. Kintetsu acquired the land to build the hotel at 6501 Legacy Drive in Plano about five years ago, prior to the onset of the pandemic that delayed the project.
This would be Kintetsu's third hotel in the United States. There is one in Torrance, California, less than 2 miles from Toyota North America's former headquarters campus, and another one in Los Angeles near the Japanese American National Museum.
The automaker's decision to relocate its North America headquarters from California to Texas in 2014 paved the way for a Miyako Hotel flag to come to the Lone Star State, said Stephen Galbreath, chief development officer and head of design and construction for Garfield Public/Private LLC, the developer of the hotel.
In the past decade, Toyota opened a commercial finance division in the North Texas region, and the headquarters has lured suppliers, including Toyota’s advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi, as well as event marketing firm George P. Johnson.
Japanese Experience
Construction on the new Miyako Hotel Plano alongside a retention pond could begin by mid-2025, Galbreath said, who declined to immediately disclose the price of the project to CoStar News. Completion is expected about two years after the project gets underway.
"When Toyota moved to Plano, [Kintetsu] was asked if they would be interested in doing a hotel here, not just to serve the Japanese employees and executives from Toyota, but to bring a Japanese aesthetic, service and harmony to North Texas," Galbreath told CoStar News.
Garfield was selected as the hotel developer after having several informal dinners with executives at Kintetsu over a six-month period.
"To them and me both, relationships are everything," Galbreath said, who has spent his career traveling the world building hotels. "It took a little while, but we really like working with each other."
The new Plano hotel is expected to offer a truly authentic Japanese experience and is being designed with a simple Japanese-style aesthetic with genuine wood finishes and man-made stones to avoid mining the earth. The hotel will have a fine-dining sushi restaurant on the street level with a rooftop bar, teppanyaki rooms on the top floor offering sunset views as a chef cooks in front of a private group, and a Japanese bakery with pastries.
Galbreath said the hotel will have overflow bathtubs for guests within a shower-like area to give a luxurious experience typically seen only in Japan. The design also combines the cultures of Japan and Texas, offering outdoor areas with large fans for Texas guests wanting to spend some time in the heat. The Japanese influence is geared toward the hotel's planned state-of-the-art air conditioning system to keep the triple-digit temperatures at bay.
Both Japanese and Texan cultures are big on hospitality, so this will be a strong focus of the hotel flag, Galbreath said. The hotel is expected to offer custom stationery as well as traditional Japanese teapots, cups and toiletry items in custom cabinetry, he added.
Guest rooms will offer low tables and mats for guests to eat in the traditions seen in Japan alongside Western-style dining tables and chairs for those unable to eat that low to the ground, Galbreath said. The hotel is expected to have an emperor's suite, rather than a presidential suite, with ultra-luxury offerings.
The hotel will include about 10,000 square feet of meeting space, including two ballrooms and other smaller meeting rooms. The exterior of the hotel is designed to offer a Japanese-inspired garden using Texas plants, Galbreath said, but the types of plants and trees are still being discussed, with cherry blossom trees and Crepe Myrtles on the list. The outdoor lighting in the gardens will mimic paper lanterns used in Japan.
The first floor of the hotel, known as floor 0 by the developer, will have a fitness center, meeting rooms and a board room that spills out to the lawn and pool. The hotel is expected to offer small sauna rooms alongside the deck of the pool, Galbreath said.
For the Record
Turner Construction is the project's general contractor. Gensler is the project architect. Looney & Associates is the hotel's interior designer.