Once Upon a Time at the Clermont

PROJECT NAME: The Clermont Hotel Campaign
Our Plan: Save the Clermont

Just as the city of Atlanta did long ago, the phoenix has once again risen from the ashes. The Clermont Hotel (and its better-known downstairs Lounge, featuring Blondie and a coterie of nearly-as-famous strippers) reopened to the public in the summer of 2018 as an urban escape for tourists and Atlantans.

A New Chapter: How the “Clermont Hotel Design Competition” catalyzed its preservation.

An illustration of the Hotel Clermont in Atlanta, Georgia, showcasing its modern design, with a prominent vertical sign and a few cars parked in front, and trees lining the street.

But it wasn’t long ago that the Clermont Hotel was in such a state of disrepair that it was shut down by the city. Many thought the bulldozer was next.

View of a brick building with multiple windows, a neon sign for Hotel Clermont, and an A-frame sign advertising parking rates.

That’s when Gene Kansas | Commercial Real Estate stepped in with a colorfully innovative plan to spark a grassroots effort to save the building, creating the Clermont Hotel Design Competition in 2009. The marketing and community-building strategy worked. Over 600 applications were downloaded in what became a national news story. In a beer-soaked reveal at The Clermont Lounge, Gamble + Gamble Architects came out victorious with their entry celebrating a “Heaven and Hell” dichotomy, with a wedding chapel on the roof and the lounge in the basement.

Saving the Clermont would help cultivate a heightened focus on preservation, and help spark a redevelopment revolution on Ponce de Leon. The Clermont Hotel Design Competition also resulted in Gamble + Gamble becoming the architect in the hotel’s eventual redesign, a testament to the firm’s abilities, a pretty cool idea, and the will of a community. We’re also happy and proud to say, “Sometimes contests work!”