Hotel News

Dream Hotel brand enters Texas with cool new boutique hotel in Frisco

Coming to Frisco in 2026.

Courtesy rendering

Frisco is getting a new boutique hotel from a brand that's new to Texas: Called Dream Frisco, it's from New York-based Dream Hotel Group and will open as part of Firefly Park, a 230-acre mixed-use development at 8000 McKinney Rd., at the nexus of US Highway 380 and the Dallas North Tollway, that will also include offices, retail, homes, and restaurants.

Dream Hotel Group is a hotel brand and management company founded by Sant Singh Chatwal, also a restaurateur who built businesses in Ethiopia and Canada before coming to New York in 1981. The company's hotel brands include Dream Hotels, Time Hotels, The Chatwal, and Unscripted Hotels.

They currently have 15 hotels and 25 more in development, including New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Bangkok, and Nashville.

Dream Frisco will include:

200 rooms
rooftop pool deck and bar
state-of-the-art fitness center
four food and beverage offerings, including a signature restaurant, nightclub, social club, and lobby bar

Dream Hotel Group CEO Jay Stein says in a statement that Frisco is the ideal destination to expand the Dream brand as it's one of the fastest-growing markets in Texas.

"We are fortunate to collaborate with visionary developers like Wilks Development who share our same big dreams and bold ambitions to grow and develop our brand in new and emerging markets across the country," Stein says. "Firefly Park is the future of North Dallas, and we are thrilled to be a part of it."

Firefly Park is the latest name for a development that has previously been called The Oxbow at Frisco and also Frisco North. But Firefly Park sounds much cooler, yes?

A release says it will be nestled among 230 acres of untouched Texas countryside into which they will plunk 4.75 million square feet of commercial office space, 2,200 luxury residential mid- and high-rise units, townhomes, food & beverage offerings, 380,000 square feet of retail space, a planned music hall, and outdoor amphitheater. Farewell, untouched Texas countryside!

Public spaces will include a creek park and nature preserve with hike-and-bike trails, multiple ponds and water features, and state-of-the-art playground facilities.

Many involved with this find it to be "cool":

Frisco Mayor Jeff Cheney says: "When we started thinking about what the northern part of Frisco was going to look like, we knew it needed to be a different experience from the southern part of our city. Now, with the announcement of the Dream Hotel coming to Firefly Park, it adds a significantly different, cool vibe to Frisco."
Lynn Dowdle, president of Dowdle Real Estate, who connected Dream Hotel Group with Wilks Development, says: "Dream Frisco will offer up a sophisticated-cool factor like no other."

So so cool.

Dream Frisco follows recent signings of Dream Miami, Dream Louisville, Dream Oklahoma City, and Unscripted Oklahoma City, making Dream Frisco the fifth new hotel deal signed by Dream Hotel Group in less than five months.

In any case, it's still a long way off. Firefly Park isn't even scheduled to break ground until 2023. Dream Frisco, the hospitality centerpiece of the new development, will open its doors in 2026. Anything could happen. But today, today, all is bright optimism.

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Uptown News

Euro-style Hotel St. Germain in Uptown Dallas closed after 33 years

Google Maps / Flashback Dallas

Hotel St. Germain

A darling boutique hotel in Uptown Dallas that was Dallas' first B&B has closed: Hotel St. Germain, which occupied a turn-of-the-century home at 2516 Maple St., closed its doors and auctioned off its furnishings in an estate sale that took place November 8-10.

A friend of the family that owned the hotel confirmed that it had been closed for nearly a year, and that the property was recently sold to an undisclosed buyer who intends to maintain its lodging status.

It's in a prime location, since Maple Avenue is currently going through a major turnover from bumpy little street to the home of big projects like Maple Terrace, the 22-story residential tower at 3003 Maple Ave.

Hotel St. Germain was opened in 1991 by businesswoman and former New Orleans resident Claire Heymann, the granddaughter of a Paris antiques dealer, who did exactly what preservationists dream about: She took a crumbling old home built in 1900 and transformed it, giving it a stunning makeover and filling it with fine art and antiques: one-of-a-kind sleigh beds, spindly antique desks, amber wall sconces, vintage bathroom fittings, and sparkling crystal chandeliers.

The property had only seven rooms, each unique, and was Dallas' first bed-and-breakfast inn. It also had a quirky in-house restaurant featuring acclaimed chefs of the day such as William Guthrie.

It's disappointing to have missed the sale with its assortment of leaded glass windows, vintage sinks, chandeliers, and French antique furniture.

Flashback Dallas shares a history of the structure, and food writer Mark Stuertz (who co-authored Fork Fight!, the memoir by Pei Wei co-founder Mark Brezinski) wrote a great review of the restaurant in 1997, recounting its colorful past.

"Heymann discovered the property in the late '80s, then a foreclosed, boarded-up hovel facing a wrecking ball, while scouring the area between McKinney and Turtle Creek for an old house worthy of conversion into a small, stylish hotel similar to those she had visited on numerous jaunts to San Francisco," he wrote.

Heymann named it for the St. Germain area of Paris, and filled it with elegant furnishings, many from her antiques dealer mother. Stuertz called the result "an odd mix of romance, quaintness, European-style finery, and antique-collector busyness," "stuffed with fabrics fussily pleated, puddled, lashed and tasseled, as well as handsome furnishings seasoned with art deco accents and shabby chic touches."

The closure was due in part to the fact that Heymann has been suffering from Alzheimer's Disease and is in a nursing home.

Gary Bellomy, who worked at the hotel, posted an elegy on Facebook, calling her "one of the most complicated and brilliant women I have known."

"Hotel St. Germain, her mad, brilliant brainstorm joins the ranks of Dallas’ unique history," he said. "Many of you will mourn. It is unlikely we will ever see this level of French sophistication in this spot we call home."

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