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Always Room for More
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By Pam Droog
Don Breckenridge
President, D.E. Breckenridge Companies
With the opening of the stunning Sheraton St. Louis City Center
Hotel & Suites on July 15, developer Don Breckenridge built his
10,000th room. But perhaps the first 100 provide the best insight
into his heart and mind.
After leaving military service, Breckenridge became a traveling
candy salesman, which meant he stayed in hotels several nights a
week. “Somehow I thought I could run a better hotel than any of
the places I stayed in,” he says.
His opportunity to do that came in 1964, after a miserable, mid-summer
stay in the old, un-airconditioned Governor’s Hotel in Jefferson
City. “I thought I would die,” Breckenridge recalls. “I thought,
how can the state capital not have decent hotel rooms?”
The next week he traveled to Arizona to talk to Ramada Inn officials
about a Jefferson City franchise. There were just a few problems.
He didn’t own land in the area, he had little money to buy a franchise
and he had no backers.
However, Ramada management “felt my determination,” Breckenridge
says. The hotel chain carried a note on his franchise, the Catholic
Church sold him some land, and, just in time for Gov. Warren Hearnes’
inauguration, Breckenridge opened a Ramada Inn in Jefferson City.
Since then, Breckenridge, president of the D. E. Breckenridge Companies,
has built 33 hotels all over the U.S. His latest and clearly most
unique property is the new Sheraton an adaptive reuse/renovation
of the former Edison Brothers Warehouse, the one next to Highway
40 with Richard Haas’ famed trompe l’oeil mural.
Breckenridge says he had looked at the building years ago, but nothing
came of it. Then when he read that it might be torn down, he went
to work to acquire and develop the property, nearly a three-year
process.
The $80 million, 13-story, one-million-square-foot Sheraton has
288 rooms, three restaurants and a 440-car garage. The unique mixed-use
development also includes 75 condominiums, priced from $259,900
to $371,900, over half of which were sold before the place opened.
There’s also a 20,000-square-foot health club with an Olympic-size
swimming pool on the top floor.
The hotel creatively makes use of the building’s 17 original, floor-to-ceiling
columns in the lobby. Another important element is the huge 1.2
million cubic foot central atrium, which adds light and drama. “We
literally sawed it out,” Breckenridge says. “My heart was in my
throat the first couple of days.”
Today, he says, “It’s hard to believe where we’ve taken it to from
an old warehouse that was empty for four years.”
It has been 26 years since Breckenridge’s last experience in the
City of St. Louis, when he built the Marriott Pavilion Hotel. He’s
back because “now is the best chance the city has had for a long
time for redeveloping itself,” he believes, citing state of Missouri
and federal historic preservation tax credits, TIF assistance and
a cooperative administration in City Hall.
Despite developing hotels in 11 states, from California and Colorado
to Iowa, Ohio and Florida, Breckenridge’s company is small—just
six employees. That’s a drastic change from a few years ago, when
he built and managed properties and had 4,800 employees. “It got
to the point where I just managed people problems, and that’s not
what I like to do,” Breckenridge says.
He sold several properties and no longer manages the others, so
he can do what he likes, which is “using my creative juices to put
together projects,” he says. He also enjoys just being in and around
hotels. “I like the activity of a hotel and everything that makes
it tick,” he says. “You have to like it because if you don’t, the
hours are terrible. Nine-to-five is a joke.”
To accommodate his career and family, Breckenridge made his family—his
wife and six children—part of his career. “All of my kids have worked
for the company in one way or another,” he says. His daughter, Linda
Emmenegger, is his director of operations. Her husband, Greg, was
the assistant project manager at the Sheraton. And Diane, his wife
of 31 years and a noted St. Louis interior designer, is actively
involved in every Breckenridge project. “It has been a great collaboration,”
Breckenridge says.
This very busy man can also be the laziest, he confesses. To relax,
Breckenridge likes to spend time with his 10 grandchildren, who
all live in St. Louis, and he plays a little golf. The Breckenridges
travel a lot, but that’s not necessarily relaxing. “We both look
at hotels differently from most people, but we learn a lot that
way,” he says. In fact, to prepare for the new Sheraton, the couple
visited the Beverly Hills Hotel, because it has a similar column
arrangement in the lobby.
Breckenridge has cut back on his civic activities after decades
of service. He has been a board member or an officer of numerous
organizations, including the St. Louis Convention and Visitors Commission,
the Variety Club and “30 some-odd more,” he says. “In the hotel
business when you host functions for organizations you end up becoming
part of them.”
With the Sheraton’s successful grand opening behind him, Breckenridge
can afford to look ahead. “My hope is that in the next five to 10
years we’ll see some dramatic changes in the region,” he says, “and
I intend to be a part of them.”
Pam Droog is a St. Louis-based free-lance writer.
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