The Spectator Hotel was awarded The Best City Hotel in the Continental U.S. and #2 Best Hotel in the World by Travel + Leisure.

The Spectator Hotel is a 32,300 square-foot, four-story boutique hotel in Downtown Charleston. LS3P Associates was the architect and ADC provided the structural engineering for this hotel that presented numerous structural design challenges. The Spectator was built in a flood zone and had to be flood-proofed to an elevation approximately eight feet above the ground floor. The perimeter first floor walls and ground floor slab were designed to resist flood forces.

The hotel is also located on a cramped downtown site with streets on two sides and buildings on the other two. The building meets the property lines on all four sides which required creative design and construction methods.

In addition to flood-proofing and the tight site conditions, ADC also had the typical challenge of designing the structure to meet tough Charleston wind and seismic design standards.

Travel + Leisure scored Spectator Hotel at 97.78 in The Best City Hotel in the Continental U.S. The article quotes reader Jane Keenan as saying, “Probably the most elegant boutique hotel I’ve ever been to,” said Jane Keenan, a T+L reader who thought the hotel was “perfect in every way.”