Montrose’s New Boutique Hotel Breaks Ground and Another One Is Coming to The Heights — Bunkhouse’s Hotel Saint Augustine Takes Shape

Thunder boomed through the Forney construction field office while rain poured on the construction site Tuesday morning putting a serious damper on groundbreaking ceremonies for Bunkhouse Hotels’ inaugural Houston project — Hotel Saint Augustine. Not to be deterred, organizers scooped up piles of dirt from the site and poured heaps on a stretch of plastic so that all interested parties, shovels in hand, could scoop for the photo opp.

The 71-room hotel in Montrose, set to rise directly across Loretto Drive from The Menil Collection‘s Drawing Institute, is expected to be completed by the fourth quarter of 2024. And it will be unlike any notion of the traditional hotel.

In keeping with Bunkhouse‘s reputation for an elevated passion for design, commitment and the experiential, the hotel will spread across a tree-shaded block with five buildings intersected by courtyards, gardens and walking paths. The two-story property, designed by renowned Lake/Flato architects, aims to embrace the esthetics of the Montrose and Museum District neighborhoods. Austin-based landscape architects Ten Eyck is responsible for the gardens, winding pathways and outdoor spaces which will pay homage to the mature trees on the site.

“We love projects that have good outdoor spaces where people can gather from the neighborhoods,” Bunkhouse Hotels president Lisa Bonifacio tells PaperCity. “This area is so lush and green, it fits in with what our current projects have.

“We believe that Houston is ripe with opportunity for us and will respond well to our Bunkhouse esthetic and Bunkhouse culture.”

Bunkhouse also has more in store for Houston. “We have another project here in Houston that we’ve been working on in The Heights,” Bonifacio says. Timing? “After this one.”

Plans are for Hotel Saint Augustine to be a landing pad not only for travelers but also for Houstonians who would drop in for a drink at the bar or a bite at the restaurant. The hotel will also bring an intimate event space. Renderings of the dramatic interiors by New York-based design studio Post Company create a sense of what’s to come for Montrose.

Hotel Saint Augustine is anything but a random commercial enterprise. As developer Greg Marchbanks of The Marchbanks Company noted in remarks to the gathering, the design and development teams worked closely with The Menil Collection to create a property in sync with the museum ethos. In fact, The Menil’s Sarah Hobson allowed that Dominique de Menil’s initial vision for the area was to have a boutique hotel included.

It was no coincidence then that among those attending the groundbreaking were Menil director Rebecca Rabinow and board of trustees chair Janet Hobby as well as Inprint Inc.’s executive director Rich Levy and associate director Krupa Parikh. The Inprint headquarters are on West Main, just around the corner from the hotel site.

In keeping with Bunkhouse traditions, of the 71 rooms in the Houston property there will be 14 suites and eight eco rooms.