Hard Rock International is teaming up with Oklahoma City developer Pointe Vista Holding to build a Hard Rock Hotel and Residences, adding a second Hard Rock-branded property to Oklahoma that will be within a quick drive to Texas.
Hard Rock International, owned by the Seminole Tribe of Florida, has yet to build a hotel in Texas. The firm is known to build casino-resort destinations, such as the hotel it completed in greater Miami in the shape of a guitar before the pandemic. However, Hard Rock International is not planning to include a casino at the proposed 189-room hotel and conference center along Lake Texoma in Oklahoma.
The project is joining the Pointe Vista master-planned development, which will span 2,700 acres with 19 miles of shoreline along Lake Texoma, a popular reservoir for bass fishing and recreational use that attracts 7 million visitors to its shores annually.
The development has a 320-slip marina for boats, a golf course and an enclosed water park.
"The Chickasaw Nation recently opened the West Bay Casino" nearby, so Pointe Vista doesn’t have any plans to open further gaming outlets in the area, Grant Speakes, president and chief investment officer at Pointe Vista, who is overseeing the project, told CoStar News. He added that the Hard Rock hotel has been in the works for the past year.
Hard Rock already has a hotel and casino property near Tulsa. The Lake Texoma project brings the Hard Rock hotel brand closer to the Texas border. Sherman, Texas, a small city housing a nearly $30 billion mega campus being built by Texas Instruments, is within 25 miles of Lake Texoma.
Todd Hricko, a senior vice president and head of global hotel development for Hard Rock International, said the company is excited to bring "our unique brand of hospitality and entertainment" to Lake Texoma and the Pointe Vista development. Hard Rock declined to comment further to CoStar News, saying additional information would be released at a later date.
The Texoma hotel is expected to cost upward of $150 million, but it is still being designed. Officials with Hard Rock said it will have "the signature guitar" at the main entryway of the hotel, with 189 rooms and 25 suites, as well as 168 residential rentals. The project also will include an 18,000-square-foot conference center and event lawn.
"We just got back from an exciting planning and design meeting with Hard Rock, and this hotel is going to be the perfect combination of country-rock and modern aesthetic," Speakes told CoStar News, adding that the firm expects to release a rendering of the project in the coming weeks.
The project is expected to be built on acreage adjacent to an 11-acre Caribbean-style man-made lagoon called Oasis Spring with white sandy beaches and islands meant for swimming and nonmotorized vehicles.
Construction on the Hard Rock Hotel at Lake Texoma and The Residences at the Hard Rock Hotel Lake Texoma is scheduled to begin in March. The project is expected to open by mid-2026.
Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt said the new hotel and residences will "create huge economic opportunity" for the area. Speakes told CoStar News the project could benefit from an undisclosed number of economic incentives. "We are looking into PACE funding and will be finalizing that with our capital stack in the coming weeks," he said.
Aimbridge Hospitality is the third-party management company set to operate the Hard Rock Hotel and its residential program at the property. Beck Group is in charge of construction, Oasis Amenities is building the 11-acre Oasis Spring and Vandever Capital is the project's advisory firm.
The hotel is expected to be one of three at the Pointe Vista development, Speakes said, with two additional hotels anticipated to get underway in the coming years.
"One hotel will be a 350-room convention center hotel called the Lakeside Hotel, located to the southeast of the Caribbean Bay Hotel, and a 72-room golf course boutique hotel located on the Chickasaw Pointe Golf Course," Speakes said.