New Fishtown hotel is set to open soon with an outdoor pool

Travelers heading to Philadelphia or residents planning a staycation have a new hotel to check out this summer: Hotel Anna & Bel, in Fishtown.

The hotel, which is set to open on Aug. 7, will feature a heated pool in an outdoor courtyard, and aims to have a “European historic feel,” said Dor Berkovitz, cofounder and managing partner at Foyer Project, the real estate development firm behind the project.

“You feel like you got transported to somewhere else,” he said. ”That’s really the goal of this property, is to really make you feel like you’re not in Philly or you’re not in Fishtown.”

The hotel, at 1401 E. Susquehanna Ave., includes a restaurant, cocktail lounge, fitness center with an infrared sauna, and a deck where guests can practice yoga and meditation at their leisure.

The property includes 33,000 square feet of interior space and around 8,000 square feet of additional outdoor space. It has 50 guest rooms, which include kitchenettes and range from studios to two bedroom units.

While most of the hotel is spread out across three floors, there is also a fourth-floor section that includes a single suite of over 950 square feet. Interior-facing hotel rooms on the second floor have access to a wraparound balcony with views of the pool courtyard.

The hotel property previously served as the Penn Asylum for Indigent Widows and Single Women, and parts of the building are from the 18th century. It was purchased for $3,000,100, in October 2021, according to the Philadelphia Business Journal.

Construction began in early 2022 and required putting in new electrical, plumbing, and sprinkler systems. The work also involved preserving and restoring some of the building’s original features. Those include moldings and a main staircase that had been painted over several times throughout the years and took months to sand back to its original color, said Berkovitz.

Berkovitz declined to share the cost of the renovation but noted that OceanFirst Bank was the project lending partner.

“In the last 2½ years that we’ve been going through this project, a lot of things have changed on the construction end, on [the] financing end, so it’s not cheap” he said. “We were right in the eye of the storm of rising interest rates.”

The hotel will include a restaurant, Bastia, helmed by chef Tyler Akin of Le Cavalier in Wilmington. During the day, the restaurant, which has 65 seats including bar seating, will serve as a cafe and at night it will offer a Mediterranean menu focused on vegetables and seafood. The restaurant is set to start dinner service on July 31 and will offer daytime service as of Aug. 5.

There will also be a cocktail lounge, Caletta, which will serve light bites, drinks, feature live music, and is expected to open on Sept. 5. A pool menu can be ordered directly from the pool or at Caletta as well.

Once the hotel opens, it will employ around four full-time employees and around 12 to 17 part-time employees, said Berkovitz. The restaurant and cocktail lounge will have around six full-time employees and some 44 part-time employees.

Hotel stays start at $300 a night, and Berkovitz says he envisions the clientele in Fishtown to include locals on staycations as well as people that want to visit the area or Philadelphia generally but don’t want to be “in one of those big box hotels.”

“People wanna be in a neighborhood vs. being on the main commercial like Market Street corridor,” he said. “Depending on the guests, obviously, but I feel like the new generation wants to experience something different.”

Small hotels have been sprouting up around Fishtown in recent years and additional boutique accommodations were in the works, The Inquirer reported in 2023.

With the addition of Hotel Anna & Bel to Philadelphia’s hotel accommodations, the city’s supply of hotel rooms continues to grow, but some have been empty as the tourism industry continues to recover from the pandemic. In Philadelphia County last year, 4.25 million hotel night stays were sold, which represents a 9% increase from the previous year, but is still 11% below demand in 2019.