Work record / Development / Hyatt Studios Georgetown

Hyatt Studios, Georgetown: a feasibility study that split one question

The developer asked whether a panel wall system could close a budget gap on a 122-key Hyatt Studios in Georgetown, Texas. In February 2026 my answer was an honest no. By May we gave the developer a $9,572,784 estimate, and that is the number it is raising against.

The seat

I held the feasibility study and the construction review, from February to May 2026. The question reached me in February 2026 through LÏEF's standing seat with Xtrata. The work ran through LÏEF Development, together with Common Ground.

What I was brought in to decide

A hotel developer wanted to build an extended-stay Hyatt Studios in Georgetown, Texas, in Williamson County: four stories, 122 keys. The project had been in due diligence well over a year, its market report had weakened, and the developer had already cut its own fees to almost nothing. The schematic budget was $11,395,059, while its capital model needed hard cost near $9.5 million. That left a gap of 16.6 percent of the whole building. The developer wanted to know if Xtrata's SABS panel wall system could close it.

LÏEF Development took the construction review, plus coordination with a general contractor from San Antonio who joined in April. Common Ground ran the feasibility study with Xtrata. We were advisors and non-exclusive, giving estimates, cost analysis, construction review and coordination.

What we did

• I took the original budget apart line by line and asked how much of the building the panels could physically reach. Lines the system replaces outright made up 12.9 percent of the schematic budget. Lines it only partly replaces added 6.5 percent more. A hotel is mostly other things: plumbing, HVAC, electrical, finishes, site work and elevators.
• In February I wrote down that swapping the panels alone could not close the gap. Even after counting labor savings on other trades, the realistic effect of the system was $400,000 to $800,000. Even then the budget sat $1 million to $1.5 million over target. On top of that, Texas had no SABS-trained crews, no distributor, and no inspector who had seen the system. Common Ground therefore advised against stretching the system to hit the number.
• We reopened the study in April, once a 65 percent design development set arrived along with a San Antonio contractor who had a Texas trade network. We repriced every trade to the central Texas market. On April 14 we sent out $9,425,000, with a margin of plus or minus 12 percent, and we wrote down the single assumption the number rested on.
• I reviewed the Texas contractor's budget before I trusted it. At $9,495,658 it looked like it hit the target. But the panel material line was empty and the contractor's profit had been taken out. Put the material back on a like-for-like basis and it came to $10,915,658, and the easy yes disappeared.
• We compared all three budgets side by side, line by line, through Kanopi, LÏEF's estimating engine. Every line had a quantity and a rate. After that we built the final estimate trade by trade. The panel material has its own line, passed through with no markup, which lets a lender check it against the manufacturer's price. The band around the estimate ran minus 3 percent to plus 6 percent, which is $9,285,601 up to $10,147,151, weighted toward the upside since subcontractor pricing in Texas was soft.
• I also named the gates the estimate could not close. The capital was one. Hyatt's brand review of the panel system was another. A first SABS permit submittal in that jurisdiction would take four to six months. We were working from a design development set, not construction documents, in a soft subcontractor market, and the HVAC was sized down for the panel envelope without a mechanical engineer's signature yet. I kept the construction answer apart from the capital answer.

Results

• On May 27, 2026 the developer received a final trade-by-trade estimate of $9,572,784. That sits $72,784, or 0.77 percent, over its target. It works out to $157.33 a square foot and $78,465 a key.
• Measured per square foot, the progression ran $185.54 on the original contractor's budget, then $153.46 in April, then $179.40 for the Texas budget after normalizing it. The final landed $1,822,275, or 15.99 percent, below the original budget, and $1,342,874, or 12.30 percent, below the Texas contractor's normalized budget. Most of that second gap sat in mechanical and electrical.
• We answered the construction question to the dollar. The capital question stayed with the developer, who is raising money against the estimate.
• The study left a standing review step behind. The rule now: normalize a partner's budget before believing it, and compare it division by division with the original and with LÏEF's own. Our central Texas trade pricing is the reference set for the next hotel or multifamily estimate, and no LÏEF estimate carries a round line item.

The lesson

Price only what you can really price, and do not stretch a system into a market with no trained crews to install it.

Stories from this work

Questions about Hyatt Studios Georgetown, answered

Firm record

Common Ground keeps its own account of this engagement: Hyatt Studios Georgetown on the Common Ground wiki.

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