Harvey Hanna buys Crosswinds Motel in Rehoboth
New Castle County-based Harvey Hanna & Associates announced Feb. 20 it has purchased the Crosswinds Motel in Rehoboth Beach.
“We are thrilled to add Crosswinds to our growing portfolio of hospitality destinations,” said Thomas J. Hanna, Harvey Hanna & Associates Inc. president and CEO, in a prepared statement. “This charming beach resort property holds a special place in the hearts of locals and visitors alike.”
Dale and Katherine Lomas opened the 23-room Crosswinds Motel at 312 Rehoboth Ave. in 1998. The press release said Harvey Hanna has plans to “enhance and rejuvenate” the motel, but did not provide any specifics.
Similar to Harvey Hanna’s other resort-area businesses, Crosswinds will be operated by TKo Hospitality Management, which operates 16 hotels throughout the Mid-Atlantic region. The management company also operates Coast and three other Harvey Hanna hospitality businesses – Hyatt Place Dewey Beach, Hyatt House Lewes Rehoboth Beach and Hyatt Place Kent Narrows & Marina.
Harvey Hanna’s purchase of Crosswinds is the second Rehoboth Beach motel the company has bought in recent years. In late 2021, the company bought the former Sandcastle Motel on the corner of Rehoboth Avenue and Second Street. After nearly 18 months of a top-to-bottom renovation, the motel reopened in July as Coast Rehoboth Beach, a hotel that falls under Hilton’s Tapestry Collection.
The renovation of Coast spurred a change to city code related to demolitions and also several recommended changes to the site-plan approval process that haven’t yet been taken up by city commissioners.
More recently, in November, Coast announced it plans to add 12 more rooms. To accommodate the addition, a variance is needed to increase the hotel’s floor-to-area ratio from 2.24 to 2.89. City code calls for a FAR of 2. A board of adjustment hearing on the variance was scheduled for January, but it was canceled and has not yet been brought back.
Harvey Hanna representatives declined to comment on future plans or the status of the addition to Coast.
Chris Flood has been working for the Cape Gazette since early 2014. He currently covers Rehoboth Beach and Henlopen Acres, but has also covered Dewey Beach and the state government. He covers environmental stories, business stories and random stories on subjects he finds interesting, and he also writes a column called Choppin’ Wood that runs every other week. Additionally, Flood moonlights as the company’s circulation manager, which primarily means fixing boxes that are jammed with coins during daylight hours, but sometimes means delivering papers in the middle of the night. He’s a graduate of the University of Maine and the Landing School of Boat Building & Design.
