Clarence J.
Yelp
The people here are spectacular. Everyone we talked to was wonderfully warm, friendly, fun, and helpful. (I don't usually start hotel reviews with comments about the people, but they really were excellent!)
This is a beautiful industrial-modern hotel. (At least "industrial-modern" is how my brain saw it.) It's clean and cool throughout the building, with fun details like the room numbers projected onto the wall by light through a metal stencil. (The room numbers are in at least a couple of locations and styles for ease of use.) We chose a "large studio" room for a few-day stay and found it to be _huge_ for two of us. The rooms have comfortable, straightforward furniture - bed, bedside tables, desk, desk chair, reading chairs - and plenty of open floor. Speaking of the floor, it's a wonderfully cool concrete floor, with a colorful rug under the bed. The exposed brick and painted ceiling with a few exposed pipes - perfectly quiet - complete the industrial look. There's a small open closet area, and there are also hooks on the entryway wall. In a fun, practical addition, three farmhouse doors in and around the bathroom allow for varying levels of privacy and natural light. The giant window that stretched across most of our room overlooked Main St. and gave us a pretty view of the surrounding area and the Memphis skyline.
The location is very good. It seemed to be in an old area of 'downtown,' which seemed to be undergoing a broad renovation, along the industrial-modern theme. The hotel is located about a block from the poignant and fascinating National Civil Rights Museum, with numerous restaurants nearby. The hotel's two restaurants are very good: Hustle & Dough coffee shop (outstanding coffee - especially the Costa Rican blend - and plenty of wonderful pastries) and Longshot shuffleboard/shufflepuck restaurant/pub (family friendly). (There's also Bar Hustle in the lobby in the evenings, which has a great reputation, but it was closed before 9:30pm on a Wednesday evening when we thought it closed at 10, so we missed out. They did have excellent liquor on display though.) The lobby area is bright from large windows and full of assorted plush seating options. When the trolley's running, there's a stop immediately in front of the hotel. I chose to use the convenient valet parking as I didn't plan to use my car for several days, but there also seemed to be plentiful metered street parking. (I don't know about the times or prices of the latter though.)
I look forward to staying here again!