A Look Inside the Dazzling Embassy Suites
My timing on articles in recent months has been thrown off by personal variables and, now, by a pandemic. I would normally post photographs from inside a new business just as it opens, but I missed...
Alpesh Patel
COVID-19: Business Updates with A Dopo, Embassy Suites, Tree and Vine and Citifid-o
This is part of an ongoing series checking in with downtown businesses during the COVID-19 Pandemic. You can find the other installments of this story here: Part 1 (Sapphire, An Anonymous Business, Emilia and Knox Mason),...
CJ’s Tacos Opens at 507 South Gay Street
CJ’s Tacos, who many of you know from his taco tent or from Chris Jones’ food truck, has opened his first brick and mortar location inside Embassy Suites. A soft opening last weekend attracted lines as...
Wake Foot Sanctuary and Spa Opens Inside the Embassy Suites
Ami Patel, owner of Wake Foot Sanctuary and Spa inside the Embassy Suites at 507 South Gay Street (enter through Union Avenue entrance), searched with her husband, Alpesh Patel, owner of the new downtown Embassy Suites,...
K Brew Downtown Opens on Gay Street
In addition to the opening of the Embassy Suites at 507 South Gay Street last Thursday, a number of ancillary businesses opened at the same address. Alpesh Patel, Embassy Suites owner and developer, was very deliberate...
Knox Mason Re-Opens Thursday in New Home
It’s the best of Knoxville stories. The kind of arc that can’t really happen, but does happen because, well, Knoxville. About twenty years ago in a high school typing class, freshman Alpesh Patel and junior Matt...
An Update and Look Inside the Downtown Embassy Suites
It was October 2017 when Alpesh Patel announced plans for his Kana Hotel Group to transform the office building at 505 South Gay Street to an Embassy Suites Hotel. At the time, the estimated completion date...
Plans Announced for a Major Building on Gay Street
Three weeks ago I wrote about the Conley Building at 505 – 507 South Gay Street. After a range of uses over the years, serving mostly as banks and office space, the building had become entangled...
Lengthy Litigation Results in New Ownership and Possibilities for Prominent Downtown Building
Like me, you may have wondered what was happening in a building positioned on perhaps the most prominent corner in the city: Union and Gay. The Conley Building has seemed underutilized for years even as properties...