The first hotel in downtown Frederick, Maryland, to open in decades is now welcoming guests at the property, which had housed a 19th century convent and Catholic school but has since been transformed into a boutique hospitality destination.
The roughly 65,000-square-foot Visitation Hotel Frederick recently opened with 65 guest rooms, including nine long-term stay options, according to Lance Jaccard, co-developer of the project and CEO of OTJ Architects.
Jaccard and real estate developer Jim O'Hare purchased the property from the Archdiocese of Baltimore in 2017 for $2.75 million, Jaccard said. The roughly 3.5-acre site is also home to Visitation Frederick Condominiums.
Jaccard said OTJ Architects was retained to design the hotel project and multifamily units at the site. The archdiocese did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“It was an exciting challenge,” Jaccard told CoStar News, adding that development on the hotel began in 2022 as financing was secured, with the project's total cost reaching $30 million.
Located about 45 miles from both Washington, D.C., and Baltimore — or about one hour by car — the city of Frederick is experiencing a tourism boom in parallel with the arrival of more hospitality options as the area becomes a travel destination in the capital region.
"Frederick has long deserved a boutique hotel, and we are pleased Visitation can play that role,” Naveen Kakarla, CEO of HHM Hotels, the company managing the property, said in a statement.
The hotel includes event spaces, a tavern and a cafe. It will have several features that pay homage to its religious roots, including rosary beads used to hang "do not disturb" signs.
The development team said Visitation is the first hotel in downtown Frederick in 50 years.
More condos planned
As for the multifamily component, the first condo building opened in late 2023 and has 10 units, Jaccard said.
Another building with seven more condos is slated for completion this fall, and a third structure with more condo or hospitality units is planned for the center of the campus in five years, he added. Most of the units in the first and second building are three bedrooms in the range of 2,500 square feet to 3,500 square feet.
Visitation Academy was founded in 1846. Its nuns temporarily used the site as a makeshift hospital for Union soldiers wounded in the Civil War. The convent closed in 2005, and a Catholic boarding school for girls then closed in 2016 amid low enrollment, Jaccard said.
The location is not the only hospitality venue making inroads in Frederick. Also in December, the city began demolition at another site for a downtown hotel and conference center. The $100 million public-private partnership project is expected to create more than 200 permanent jobs. Maryland Gov. Wes Moore’s administration allocated $7.5 million in its fiscal 2025 capital budget to support the project.
In November, Frederick’s tourism group Visit Frederick said visitors spent $539 million in Frederick County in 2023, surpassing the previous year's record of $518 million. Additionally, nearly 2 million travelers explored the county in 2023, similar to the 2022 figure.
“This consistent level of tourism reflects the highest visitor count since 2019, the last pre-pandemic year,” Visit Frederick said.
For the record
Bognet Construction served as the general contractor of Visitation Hotel Frederick, and sustainable engineering firm Greenman-Pedersen also worked on the project.