Hyatt Studios, Georgetown: a feasibility study that split the question in two

What it is

A hotel developer planned a four-story, 122-key Hyatt Studios extended-stay hotel in Georgetown, Texas, in Williamson County. It had been in due diligence for well over a year, its market report had gotten worse, and it had already cut its own fees close to nothing. Against a schematic budget of $11,395,059, its capital model needed hard cost near $9.5 million, a gap of 16.6 percent of the whole building, and it wanted to know whether Xtrata's SABS panel wall system could close it. The question reached Fowler in February 2026 through LÏEF's standing seat with Xtrata.

LÏEF Development ran the construction review and the coordination with a San Antonio general contractor that joined in April. Common Ground ran the feasibility study with Xtrata. The work was advisory and non-exclusive: estimates, cost analysis, construction review and coordination.

What Common Ground did

• Took the original budget apart line by line and asked what share of the building the panels could physically touch. The lines the system replaces outright came to 12.9 percent of the schematic budget and the lines it partly replaces another 6.5 percent. A hotel is mostly everywhere else: plumbing, HVAC, electrical, finishes, site work and elevators.
• Put it in writing in February that the panel swap alone could not close the gap. Counting labor savings on other trades, the realistic system impact was $400,000 to $800,000, which still left the budget $1 million to $1.5 million over target. Texas also had no trained SABS crews, no distributor and no inspectors who had seen the system, so Common Ground recommended against stretching the system to hit the number.
• Re-opened the study in April, when a 65 percent design development set and a San Antonio contractor with a Texas trade network came to the table. Every trade was repriced to the central Texas market, and an April 14 figure of $9,425,000, plus or minus 12 percent, went out with its one load-bearing assumption named in writing.
• Reviewed the Texas contractor's budget before trusting it. At $9,495,658 it appeared to hit the target, but the panel material line was blank and the contractor's profit had been removed. With the material added back on a like-for-like basis it came to $10,915,658, and the easy yes was gone.
• Built a three-way, line-by-line comparison of all three budgets through Kanopi, LÏEF's estimating engine, with a quantity and a rate on every line, and priced the final estimate trade by trade. The panel material sat on its own line as a pass-through, not marked up, so a lender could check it against the manufacturer's price. The band on the estimate ran minus 3 percent to plus 6 percent, $9,285,601 to $10,147,151, weighted to the upside because Texas subcontractor pricing was soft.
• Named the gates the estimate could not close: capital, Hyatt's brand review of the panel system, a first SABS permit submittal in the jurisdiction with a four to six month timeline, a design development set rather than construction documents, a soft subcontractor market, and HVAC sized down for the panel envelope but not yet signed by a mechanical engineer. The construction answer was kept separate from the capital answer.

Results

• A final trade-by-trade estimate of $9,572,784 went to the developer on May 27, 2026, $72,784 or 0.77 percent over its target: $157.33 per square foot and $78,465 per key.
• Per square foot, the numbers ran from $185.54 on the original contractor's budget to $153.46 in April and $179.40 for the Texas budget normalized. The final landed $1,822,275, or 15.99 percent, under the original budget, and $1,342,874, or 12.30 percent, under the Texas contractor's normalized budget; most of the second gap sat in mechanical and electrical.
• The construction question was answered to the dollar. The capital question stayed with the developer, which is raising the money against the estimate.
• A standing review step came out of the study: normalize a partner's budget before believing it, then set it beside the original and beside LÏEF's own, division by division. The central Texas trade pricing became the reference set for the next hotel or multifamily estimate, and LÏEF estimates now carry no round line items.

External links

• Public data room: Hyatt Studios, Georgetown data room

Stories from this work

At a glance