There’s a new 20-room hotel coming to downtown Clarksdale, the Travelers Hotel, with a tentative opening date of early next year. Ann Williams is executive director of Coahoma Collective, which is a new non-profit operating in downtown Clarksdale and also the developer of the project.
“Our mission is an arts-driven revitalization effort in downtown Clarksdale,” Williams said. “And we are the developer of the hotel. We closed on the deal February 12, bought the building and started construction on February 13 and we anticipate it taking until the end of the year to complete. We hope to be open early 2019. Bubba O’Keefe is our contractor and we actually bought the building from Bubba and a couple of his partners.”
Williams said the hotel will be going into the Webster Building in downtown Clarksdale, which was originally built in the 1920s and is located at 212 Third Street.
“It’s two floors and the first floor for many years was a printing company, and upstairs when the building first opened was a 13-room hotel called the Travelers Hotel. It was a hotel that really accommodated the men working on the railroad line that runs right behind the hotel.”
Williams said another non-profit, Clarksdale Revitalization, Inc. funded a market study for Coahoma Collective to be sure the area could support the hotel.
“As soon as we got started, the first thing we did was commission a feasibility study, because we wanted to be sure that downtown Clarksdale could sustain a 20-room hotel. And the study found that yes, downtown Clarksdale could support the hotel with cultural events and activities to bolster it. So, that’s where Coahoma Collective came in. We’ll also be doing things that will bring more foot traffic to the area, such as exhibits and plays, so people can enjoy what Clarksdale has to offer, but also to put more heads in those beds.”