What’s Good? This month, it’s Investing in Appalachia: Green Book Hotels

Lately, we have been sitting with the question of what success really looks like when investing in Appalachia. How is investing in rural places different from investing in urban markets? At Opportunity Appalachia’s Investor Convening in Asheville last August, Invest Appalachia’s CEO asked the question: what does risk actually look like in this region? Is it real or is it perceived? And what does success in investing look like? Is it replicability, scalability, uniformity? Or is it something harder to measure, honoring place, local ownership, and individuality?

Those questions matter because, too often, rural projects are evaluated by metrics built for somewhere else. Investing in rural can seem complicated and expensive. But perhaps what it really requires is investors who are willing to see the value of place-based work, listen to local voices, and help restore pride in the people and historic buildings that have shaped community identity. Simply put, rural investment requires patient, community-aligned capital.

This month’s Opportunity Appalachia project shows that success doesn’t have to be flashy and scalable, it can be rooted in place and locally owned. We’re heading to Bluefield, West Virginia, where two long-vacant former Green Book hotels, the Hotel Thelma and the Travelers Hotel, are getting a new lease on life through closely connected redevelopment efforts. This month, that accelerates with a groundbreaking celebration at the Hotel Thelma!

Together, the adaptive reuse projects represent a $6.5 investment in Bluefield’s future. The Hotel Thelma has successfully raised its capital stack and will begin construction soon, and the Travelers Hotel continues to advance its capital raise. Once complete, the two buildings will create 21 affordable apartments, a restaurant, and retail space, generating 40 temporary construction jobs and 10 permanent jobs. And it takes on the old chicken-and-egg debate: which comes first, housing or jobs? In Bluefield, the answer is both.

The Hotel Thelma, located in Bluefield’s historically Black East End neighborhood, will become 10 affordable apartments for seniors, alongside a restaurant space that will feature exhibits honoring the history of Black entrepreneurship in the community. The Travelers Hotel downtown will be renovated into 11 affordable apartments serving working residents, veterans, and seniors, with a retail bay located in the former lobby, also paying tribute to the legacy of businesses that once thrived there. 

This project serves both a very real need while also betting on the city’s future. A recent housing study found that professionally managed apartments in Bluefield operate at vacancy rates below 1%. The city’s planning commission has identified rental housing as a priority for economic growth. If workers can’t find housing, employers can’t succeed. 

Both properties have been vacant since the 1990s. The Hotel Thelma is significant to African American cultural heritage at the local, regional, and national levels as a rare surviving, Black-owned “safe haven” from the Jim Crow era and a cornerstone of Bluefield’s historically Black commercial and social life. Located in the Bluefield Green Book Historic District (listed on the National Register for Historic Places under Criterion A for Black Ethnic Heritage, Social History, and Transportation), Hotel Thelma was one of five Bluefield businesses listed in the Negro Motorist Green Book.  Included in the Green Book from 1950–1961, the Hotel Thelma is tied to the nationwide network of places that helped Black Americans travel with greater safety and dignity when discrimination restricted access to lodging, meals, and services.

Their restoration shows that places, and the history they hold, are worth investing in. 

Led by the Bluefield Arts and Revitalization Corporation (BARC), the project builds on a strong track record of historic preservation and downtown revitalization. Financing includes Affordable Housing Program grants from the Federal Home Loan Bank of Pittsburgh, state and federal historic tax credits, and additional grants from CDFIs and state partners. 

Investing in Appalachia doesn’t have to mean chasing the next big thing. Sometimes it looks like reopening the doors that should never have closed and doing it in a way that preserves and strengthens local ownership, dignity, and culture.

Members in AFN’s network, like Invest Appalachia and Appalachian Community Capital are helping to reopen those doors - aligning capital with community vision in ways that are catalytic, not extractive. That’s what success in investing looks like in Appalachia. 

Quote from Daniel Wallace, President & CEO of Appalachian Community Capital: Projects like the Hotel Thelma and the Travelers Hotel remind us that investment successes in Appalachia are measured in real community outcomes: affordable homes for seniors, new gathering spaces for Bluefield residents and visitors, and the celebration of local African American history. Opportunity Appalachia is proud to have supported some of the pre-development steps that led the projects to where they are today.