Boar’s Head to unveil huge meeting space

By Brian McNeill

Published: November 19, 2008

The Boar’s Head Inn resort will unveil a 9,000-square-foot meeting and event space today — a move that tourism industry officials say might give the Charlottesville area a bigger slice of the lucrative business conference market.

The resort, owned by the University of Virginia Foundation, is holding a ribbon-cutting ceremony this morning for its opulent new conference facility, which is called the Pavilion.

“We now have what I consider to be the most beautiful space in Charlottesville,” said Kevin Blake, assistant general manager of the Boar’s Head Inn.

The Pavilion includes a 5,600-square-foot grand ballroom, a 1,200-square-foot boardroom, a full-service business center, a commercial kitchen and other spaces that aim to serve business and social gatherings. With the addition of the facility, the Boar’s Head now has a total 22,000 square feet of meeting space.

“We’ve spared no expense,” Blake said. “Everyone else in this market will be kind of chasing us.”

The Pavilion’s first booking will be Thursday evening’s 95th annual Charlottesville Regional Chamber of Commerce dinner, at which the chamber will name this year’s recipient of the Paul Goodloe McIntire Citizenship Award.

UVa President John T. Casteen III praised the newly built Pavilion in a statement Tuesday. “The Pavilion has simply surpassed our expectations,” he said. “As a meeting center, it is state of the art, but it has all the distinctive old-world charm for which the Boar’s Head is known.”

The Boar’s Head is the latest of several Charlottesville-area hotels and conference centers that have expanded or renovated recently. The Doubletree Hotel Charlottesville off U.S. 29, for example, wrapped up a 16,000-square-foot renovation two weeks ago.

“It’s terrific. It looks like new,” said Mark Hucek, the Doubletree’s general manager. “We took an old building and brought the product to a level of décor and functionality that you would expect in a building built recently.”

Hucek added that he is eager to find out what sort of competition he can expect from the Boar’s Head’s new Pavilion.

“We’re two very different properties,” he said. “But I’m looking forward to going to the Chamber of Commerce dinner Thursday night and seeing what they’ve done.”

During peak travel seasons, many of the Charlottesville area’s high-end conference spaces are often booked up. The addition of the Boar’s Head Inn’s new facility will allow for more bookings and will draw more business conferences to the region, said Allie Baer, acting director and CEO of the Charlottesville Albemarle Convention & Visitors Bureau.

The Pavilion, she added, has more high-tech and comfortable amenities that are expected by top-level companies seeking to hold board meetings, training or conferences.

“It allows us to be more competitive in the marketplace,” Baer said.

During fiscal 2008, an estimated $1.3 million worth of local hotel rooms were booked as part of a meeting or conference, according to Baer.