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INDEX JOURNAL - 03/20/2023
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Since flying in from southwest Florida, Ketan Vora has been impressed with Greenwood’s warmth and hospitality.

“The community has been so welcoming,” he said. “We’re used to small town communities. Everyone knows everyone in this town.”

Vora, a founding partner at the real estate firm Edgewater Group, which recently bought the Inn on the Square, has spent the last two weeks getting excited about adding Greenwood to the communities his company works in. Edgewater purchased the historic Greenwood property on March 1, and within days crews were scaling the front of the building to seal cracks and touch up the hotel’s face.

Built in the early 1900s, the Inn on the Square building isn’t too far behind on the times, Vora said. Edgewater’s business model is to buy properties in small and mid-sized communities, renovate them and invest in the local management team to connect the business to its community.

Edgewater has ambitions for the Uptown-facing hotel. While workers are sealing leaks and cracks first to shore up the building’s health, the hotel will see extensive renovation this year.

“We’re going to redo this dining room next, then move on to the bar and pub,” Vora said. “By the end of the year, we’re going to renovate the rooms.”

New TVs, linens and furnishings will maintain the relaxed mood of rooms while giving guests an updated lodging experience. RFID room locks will tie in to a new mobile check-in system that will allow guests to check in on their phones and head straight to their rooms on arrival.

“We’re catching the place up to 2023, bringing it out of the 2010s,” Vora said.

General Manager Claire Griffith has been a mainstay at the hotel since its last renovation in 2015. She remembers the building being in disrepair and seeing little attention from the community when it was used as student housing, and she thought the building needed to live up to its century-plus of history.

“That was so exciting for me. I loved the development, the creativity, even the chaos that came with that renovation,” she said.

Griffith said she’s looking forward to Edgewater’s passion for making the Inn an anchor in Uptown and a first impression for guests visiting Greenwood.

“Once upon a time these walls were filled with people, and I’m looking forward to having everybody back,” she said.

Tom Snell, a regional manager with Edgewater, had the Inn added to the portfolio of hotels he oversees.

“We love developing existing teams,” he said. “We’re not a company that just comes in and guts the place.”

Vora said Edgewater staff learned a valuable lesson in investing in their human resources during the peak of the COVID pandemic. COVID’s affects only reinforced his confidence in the business model of developing local talent and encouraging team members to be creative in their roles.

“We kept true to our core, and the results of that was success and motivation for everybody,” he said. “There’s enough work to go around, let’s get it done. If you take care of your people, your people take care of the guests and the guests take care of you financially.”



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