Kim Hogeman recently joined Preservation Pennsylvania’s Board of Directors. As you’ll see in her love letter to the Yorktown Hotel (below), she brings a passion for preservation and a knack for project management! Kim is the Director of Strategic Development for the York County Economic Alliance. This role includes project management for both the York County Industrial Development Authority and the York County Land Bank Authority.
She is a certified Project Management Professional who has managed the details through challenging projects such as the Yorktowne Hotel rehabilitation, the Zion Lutheran Church adaptive reuse project, and other strategic initiatives throughout York County.
In their spare time, Kim and her husband Bruce prefer to travel as often as possible. But when home, they can be found in their backyard garden doing garden things, or doing race car things at race car places.
Kim is one of our three new board members! We’ve asked each of them to provide a valentine to a special place in Pennsylvania.
Note: The Yorktowne Hotel was added to the Pennsylvania At Risk list in 2017 and Preservation Pennsylvania advocated strongly against its partial demolition. It is always rewarding to see an At Risk property become an award recipient and the Yorktowne Hotel was honored with a 2023 Pennsylvania Historic Preservation Award in the Construction category.
It seems fitting to write this letter on January 31, 2024, the one-year anniversary of the reopening day of the Yorktowne Hotel in 2023. What a chaotic and emotional time that was!
The Yorktowne Hotel historic rehabilitation was a true labor of love. Not just a labor of love from me, but from the entire community. It really took a village effort to pull off a public/private partnership of this size.
Led by the York County Industrial Development Authority, a nonprofit arm of the York County government, the $54 million dollar project was a challenge from the very beginning. Funding a rehabilitation project of this size does not happen easily. The capital to undertake this endeavor was a collection of state grants, federal and state historic tax credits, public/private partnerships, conventional debt, and local philanthropic funding sources.
The Yorktowne Hotel project is unique in that affects so many aspects of economic development and touches so many industries. Investments in projects like this enhance and encourage other investment within the downtown, including placemaking activities, promotion of downtown businesses, and public safety.
Throughout the seven years of the project, the Yorktowne Hotel partnered with several local non-profits to create new programs to provide workforce training, a pipeline for employment, hospitality training, project-based experiential learning, the inclusion of local arts into all the public spaces, and awareness and promotion of our local talent.
After seven years of redevelopment and restoration, the 1925 historic Yorktowne Hotel once again reopened in Downtown York on January 31, 2023. As the only downtown, historic hotel within the City of York that is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, this rehabilitation was a very significant project within the City that enabled the hotel to remain within Downtown York, bringing jobs, a world-class place to stay, event/conference capacity, and the activation of an entire city block connecting the Market District with the Royal Square District.
Like most projects, there are a lot of highs and lows –– sometimes extreme highs and lows! You come to know a building or place quite intimately and feel connected on a visceral level. Now, the Yorktowne Hotel is once again open to the public and no longer “mine,” but I will always be a part of the Yorktowne’s story and the Yorktowne Hotel will always be a part of me.
On a personal note, after six years of working on this project, walking the halls in a construction hat each day, my fiancé and I decided that we wanted to be the first people to hold our wedding at the Yorktowne when the work was completed. In my heart I knew this was the place. It was either going to be at the Yorktowne Hotel or our backyard.
We got engaged in 2021 and had our photos taken on the job site! With unexpected project delays, it meant that we had to postpone the wedding twice, but it was so worth it in the end! We’ll celebrate our first anniversary in February. We’ll celebrate our first wedding anniversary in February with a champagne toast in the Graham Rooftop Lounge and dinner in the Grand Davidson Lobby.
Love,
Kim Hogeman
Project manager & the Yorktowne Hotel’s biggest fan
