The stylish dress and impeccable manners let me know immediately that Saddiq Mir is a hotelier in the finest European tradition. Trained in Germany and France, Mir came to Hot Springs almost three years ago to serve as Oaklawn Racing Casino Resort’s vice president of hospitality.
Oaklawn’s trackside hotel, spa, conference center and fine-dining venue were just a dream at the time. They’re now a fabulous reality, setting a higher standard for resorts in Arkansas. Mir had to deal with a pandemic, rising construction costs, a lack of qualified employees and even hotel furniture that was lost at sea. To see the result makes the headaches seem worthwhile.
“It has been a fun ride,” he says.
After moving to this country, Mir worked for some of the nation’s top hotels, including the Fairmont San Francisco, the flagship of the Fairmont chain that was built in 1907. Just before coming to Hot Springs, he helped Gaylord Hotels open its highly acclaimed Rockies Resort & Convention Center in Aurora, Colo. That resort has 1,501 hotel rooms, 485,000 square feet of convention space, indoor and outdoor pools, and eight restaurants.
Mir earlier worked for Gaylord as vice president of food and beverage at the Gaylord Texan Resort & Convention Center in Grapevine. He even spent time in Las Vegas at the famous Golden Nugget as its vice president of food and beverage. Mir helped oversee a $100 million renovation after the Golden Nugget was purchased by Landry’s Inc. in 2005.
Oaklawn has added 198 hotel rooms, an upscale restaurant named The Bugler, a bar known as the First Turn that provides a view of the first turn of the track, a fitness center, an event center that will hold 1,450 for a concert and 1,000 for a seated dinner, and four plush meeting rooms named after area lakes — DeGray, Ouachita, Catherine and Hamilton.
Astral Spa, which opened June 10, takes things to a new level in a town long known as the Spa City. Its menu of services offers everything from hydrafacial treatments and skin-care services to massages and work on nails. There are saunas, needle showers and even cooling rooms. Oaklawn’s outdoor pool, which will have a bar and cabanas for rent in the style of Las Vegas, is still being built.
Work isn’t limited to the hotel and conference center. Mir takes me on a lengthy walking tour. At the casino, there’s now a high-limit area with its own bar. Meanwhile, Pop’s Lounge is being expanded and will offer additional live entertainment once it reopens.
The former Lagniappe restaurant is being turned into a fine-dining spot that will be an even higher-end establishment than The Bugler. The adjoining Bistro 2705 will become the bar for the restaurant, which is scheduled to open in November.
We head to the racetrack, where live racing will resume in December, and see even more work taking place. A stand serving Mexican food will be added. The Oyster Bar, long a favorite of Oaklawn patrons, is being updated. The adjacent Post Parade restaurant is expanding. Upstairs, the Arkansas Sports Tavern also is undergoing an expansion.
There’s construction everywhere you turn. What Oaklawn has done is force others in Hot Springs to up their game.
After my Saturday morning tour with Mir, I drive downtown and stand outside the Medical Arts Building, waiting on owner Parth Patel. Construction started on the Medical Arts Building in 1929. The 16-story structure was needed to house physicians at a time when Hot Springs was among the country’s leading health resorts.
Medical Arts was Arkansas’ tallest building for three decades. It has been mostly empty for years, but now Patel’s VIPA Hospitality has plans to transform it into a 100-room Aloft Hotel.
As I wait on Patel, I watch the crowds walking along Central Avenue. Having grown up about 35 miles away, I’ve been coming to downtown Hot Springs my entire life. I’ve never seen it as crowded. Across the street, every table on the veranda of the Arlington Hotel is filled with people. The amphibious vehicles known as the Ducks also are packed.
The pent-up energy and extra money that people have coming out of the pandemic likely will lead to a record summer for Hot Springs tourism. Reading the marker that was placed at the entrance when Medical Arts made its way onto the National Register of Historic Places in 1978, I can’t help but think the Aloft will be a success.
Patel apologizes for being late, saying he had a hard time finding a parking place. Remembering the years when downtown was in decline, it’s a good problem to have. It means downtown business owners are making money.
“There’s a market out there for people who want to combine historic places such as Hot Springs with outdoor activities,” says Patel, who has lived in Hot Springs since 2005. “We started looking at this building in 2015 but couldn’t negotiate a deal. We got serious again in 2018 even though the fact that different groups owned various floors made it a complicated transaction.”
The next day, my wife and two sons take me to Father’s Day brunch at the Hotel Hale, the former bathhouse that Mayor Pate McCabe and his wife Ellen transformed into a boutique hotel and restaurant. Sunlight from skylights streams into the room, and our waiter, a New Orleans native who moved to Arkansas following Hurricane Katrina, makes me feel as if I’m having breakfast at Brennan’s in the French Quarter.
My wife proclaims it one of the best brunches she has had. It’s clear that business owners across Hot Springs are upping their game.
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Senior Editor Rex Nelson’s column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. He’s also the author of the Southern Fried blog at rexnelsonsouthernfried.com .