New Boutique Hotel and Restaurant Will Open Off South Lamar

South Austin is getting yet another boutique hotel: Carpenter Hotel will take the place of Carpenters Hall just off South Lamar. It will include a namesake restaurant, bar, and cafe at 400 Josephine Street.

Hidden in the hotel’s website code is a lyric from singer/songwriter Waylon Jennings: “Too dumb for New York City, too ugly for L.A.” It’s expected to open in mid-summer 2018 according to landscape architecture firm Pharis Design.

Hospitality and management company Mighty Union is overseeing the Carpenter Hotel. The team consists of Donald Kenney, Jack Barron, and Jen Turner. Barron is the co-founder partner of the stylish Ace Hotel Portland. Turner is a local architect and designer.

Helping the Mighty Union team is restaurant consultant Christina Skogly Knowlton, who works out of New York. She was an opening partner of New York Nordic restaurant Aska, as well as worked for chefs Tom Colicchio and Marcus Samuelsson. She also happens to be married to Bon Appetit editor Andrew Knowlton.

The group had to get approval to remove two heritage pecan trees from the property for construction. Working on the design and landscaping of the Carpenter is Pharis Design.

Currently, Mighty oversees Oregon hotel the Suttle Lodge out in Deschutes National Forest (Feast co-founder Mike Thelin is a fan), Portland sports bar Spirit of 77, and the Portland Ace Hotel restaurant Pepe Le Moko. The website also teases projects in Honolulu and San Antonio.

Just a major street over, South Congress is set to get a deluge of new hotels and revamps, from Liz Lambert’s Hotel Magdalena, private social club with a public restaurant Soho House, as well as a new restaurant within the Austin Motel from Lambert and McGuire Moorman Hospitality, Joann’s Fine Foods.

• Carpenter Hotel [Official]
• Mighty Union [Official]
• Heritage tree removal okayed for quirky hotel [Austin Curbed]