"The Philadelphia market is really strong but doesn't reallyhave any true boutique hotels at this time," Holden Lim, seniordirector at Cushman & Wakefield Sonnenblick Goldman, tellsGlobeSt.com. "So it makes sense for them to look at that market.Their goal is to expand their geographic reach to places theyaren't in."

Kimpton has a history of transforming buildings intoone-of-a-kind hotels. The VU Hotel used to an old printing factoryon the Far West Side of Manhattan and the Hotel Monaco in Baltimoreformerly was the headquarters for the Baltimore and Ohio Railroadin the 1900s. The Architect's Building was completed in 1929 toserve as the headquarters for the local chapter of the AmericanInstitute of Architects.

"This is what they do and this is what they're good at. The wayKimpton increases their portfolio is they buy these older andhistoric buildings. They're very good at these adaptive reuses,"Lim says. "They basically get their construction team in there.They have a pretty big in-house construction team, and they gothrough the building and come up with ideas for the hotel."