Cavalier Vacation resort can take shape in Virginia Beach front

Prosperous Griset


Virginia Beach front developer Bruce Thompson at the restored Cavalier Hotel Photograph courtesy Gold Key | PHR

In 1975, Bruce Thompson was the night time watchman and grass cutter at Virginia Beach’s Cavalier Lodge. Currently, he’s reworking the lodge and its 21 encompassing acres into a important mid-Atlantic resort.

Crafted in 1927, the Cavalier at many moments hosted luminaries like F. Scott Fitzgerald, Muhammad Ali and each and every president from Harry S. Truman as a result of Richard Nixon (who some assert burned the missing Watergate audiotape in the hotel’s basement). But the resort fell into disrepair and was scheduled for the wrecking ball when a group led by Thompson became included in 2013. After $85 million in renovations, the lodge reopened in 2018.

“The idea that it was heading to be demolished struck us as just anything that couldn’t materialize,” suggests Thompson, CEO of Virginia Beach-based mostly hospitality group Gold Vital | PHR, which has carried out much more than $1 billion in progress in excess of the previous 15 years. “It’s an icon for the neighborhood and for the commonwealth.”

Now Thompson is putting the remaining touches on reworking the Cavalier and a bevy of other Gold Essential holdings into a $433 million Oceanfront spot now called the Cavalier Vacation resort. Very last June, the $125 million, 305-place Marriott Virginia Beach Oceanfront opened on the assets. In 2018, Thompson persuaded the city of Virginia Seashore to let him to shut a portion of Atlantic Avenue in buy to recreate the iconic “grand lawn” that at the time ran from the Cavalier down the hill to the beach.

This Could, Gold Critical is finishing that challenge, as very well as 42 Ocean, a condominium improvement with an average price tag tag of $1.2 million for each unit. Currently, development is underway on the prepared 12-story Embassy Suites, the remaining portion of Thompson’s resort vision. It’s scheduled to open through the initially quarter of 2023.

When finished, Thompson says, the Cavalier vacation resort will be identical to South Carolina’s Sea Pines Resort. It will include 3 hotels, with a put together 600 rooms, seven eating places, 6 swimming pools, a spa, a distillery and 70,000 sq. toes of meeting space. The vacation resort also has 85 solitary-spouse and children residences and 35 condos.

Acknowledging that the pandemic has hit the hospitality marketplace difficult, Thompson states his Oceanfront homes have fared fairly improved than many others.

“It’s been truly tricky,” states Thompson, who’s also concerned in a proposal to redevelop Norfolk’s Army Circle Mall. “We’re privileged mainly because we do have that leisure company.”