Chip and Joanna Gaines, the royal couple of renovations, expanded their Waco kingdom on Friday with the opening of Hotel 1928. With the HGTV stars’ first hotel, visitors can add luxury boutique accommodations to their “Fixer Upper” experience in the Central Texas city. However, a warning to fans of their modern farmhouse-style: They won’t find any shiplap or inspirational wall art in the downtown property.
“It’s definitely an extension of their aesthetic overall, the attention to detail,” said Sandra Hadley, the hotel’s general manager. “You’re going to be able to tell that their stamp is here.”
For dedicated viewers of “Fixer Upper” and the Magnolia Network, Waco is their El Dorado, a design-centric destination where copper and ironwork are considered precious metals. The contractor-designer duo renovated about 100 Waco homes for their hit show, which debuted in 2013 and ran for five seasons. Over the years, they have ventured beyond residences, transforming a pair of abandoned cottonseed mills into the Magnolia Market at the Silos, a retail hub with a coffee shop and bakery, and the former Elite Cafe into Magnolia Table, a breakfast and lunch joint with a gift shop. On Wednesday night, Magnolia Network will air the first episode of the six-part series, “Fixer Upper: The Hotel,” which documents the rise of Hotel 1928. The show will also be available to stream on Max and Discovery Plus.
Until now, their lodging projects have been more modest. The Gaineses offer two short-term rentals, the Hillcrest Estate, a 1903 home that sleeps a dozen, and the Hillcrest Cottage, its one-bedroom carriage house.
“There is one boutique hotel named Hotel Pivovar that is located right behind the silos,” Hadley said of the non-Gaines accommodations housed in a Czech brewery. “Then again, I feel like this market yielded to a lot of Airbnb traffic because there is a lack of hotels that exists here.”
To pull off Hotel 1928, they teamed up with Adventurous Journeys “AJ” Capital Partners, a real estate investment firm that owns the Graduate Hotels, a locally themed chain based in college towns in the United States and United Kingdom.
“We want to bring this building back to its former glory. [It’s] the largest, most complicated . . . project we’ve ever done in our whole career — three floors, 53,000 square feet, 33 guest rooms, two restaurants, a library, a rooftop terrace,” Chip says in the show’s trailer.
The hotel upholds one of the couple’s founding principles: to revive old spaces. The structure was originally the Grand Karem Shrine Building, an ornate meeting place for Freemason affiliates that was built 95 years ago. Before the Gaineses purchased it in 2018, it sat mostly vacant. On the hotel’s sold-out opening weekend, it bristled with life.
“The hotel creates a sense of community, and that’s kind of what the Silos do,” Hadley said. “They bring everyone together.”
As a tribute to the hotel’s Roaring Twenties past, the Gaineses created an environment that is more F. Scott Fitzgerald than Farmer Brown. For example, they forgo their 15 shades of neutral for such dramatic hues as inky black, conifer green and deep blue. Joanna ordered customized furnishings that replicate original pieces, and vintage photography illustrating Waco’s history — the city is the birthplace of Dr Pepper and the state’s first skyscraper — adorn the walls.
“It doesn’t feel like you can’t touch anything, but it’s like you’re stepping back in time,” Hadley said. “You can kind of go and see Waco at different time periods.”
Joanna famously uses books as decor. But in the two-story library, which occupies a former coal storage room, the titles are for reading. The collection comes from Booked Up, the Archer City, Tex., bookstore founded by author Larry McMurtry. Chip, who has multigenerational ties to Archer City, purchased the whole lot after McMurtry died in 2021. Bookworms can peer under the covers to see what the Pulitzer Prize-winning owner was changing customers — $10 to thousands of dollars, according to Hadley.
Visitors are encouraged to drop by even if they aren’t staying the night. (Rates start at $375 a night, plus taxes; there is still availability through the end of the year and into 2024.) All the public spaces are open, including Bertie’s on the Rooftop, which has an outdoor terrace with views of the Silos; the Brasserie, a Southern food restaurant that can seat nearly 300 diners; and the Cafe, which serves coffee and baked goods by day and wine and beer at night. Hadley said that unlike Magnolia Table, which features Jo’s buttermilk biscuits and crunchy French toast, the hotel’s menus were shaped but not dictated by the home chef.
“Joanna offered feedback, guidance and direction on some of the menu items, but because of the scale, it’s a little bit different versus doing something at home,” she said.
Sara McDaniel has been following the Gaineses since their early years, when they owned the Little Shop on Bosque, the original Magnolia Market. (The store now sells out-of-season or slightly damaged goods.) The Louisiana resident and renovation buff has visited Waco several times, seeking ideas and inspiration. Like her mentors, she is attempting to boost her small town of Minden, La., through her projects, which include the Villas at Spanish Court, a collection of homes she rescued from rot and neglect. The eight units are available for short-term stays.
“Chip and Joanna are consistently trying to make Waco better,” said McDaniel, whose show, “In With the Old: Minden’s Mysterious Yellow House,” airs on the same night as “The Hotel.” “They’re trying to bring tourists in. They are creating experiences and a destination. It makes perfect sense to add a hotel to their portfolio.”
Hotel 1928 does not necessarily belong in the same category as other celebrity-affiliated hotels. Robert De Niro (Nobu Hotels), Francis Ford Coppola (luxury properties in Italy, Belize, Argentina and Guatemala) and Richard Gere (the Bedford Post Inn in New York’s Westchester County) earn top billing at their hotels, even though they appear to be more marquee lights than action.
Chekitan Dev, a professor of marketing at Cornell University’s Nolan School of Hotel Administration, said a more sustainable model will extol a particular lifestyle, such as Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville. Guests want to eat cheeseburgers in paradise, or feast on home decor ideas to create a farmlike sanctuary without the backbreaking chores.
In 2017, Sherri Betz packed up her dog and drove more than 1,750 miles from California to Waco, racing against the clock to arrive before Sunday, Magnolia Market’s day off. “I was almost devastated because I thought I wasn’t going to get to see it, so I basically did not sleep,” said Betz, who arrived by noon on Saturday.
The physical therapist filled her car with home decor items for her new house in northeast Louisiana. She returned to Waco several more times, sometimes alone, once with her mother. She stayed at the Hillcrest Cottage.
“It was adorable,” she said. “It was such a wonderful place to stay.”
Betz avoids Waco during the busy seasons, such as the holidays, and scorcher months. She did not have an immediate plan to visit, but on the eve of Hotel 1928’s opening, she suddenly felt the urge to embark on the five-hour journey.
“I think I need to go to the grand opening,” she said, not entirely joking. “I need to get in the car tomorrow and drive down there.”