A six-story boutique hotel is taking shape on St. Charles Avenue at the corner of St. Andrew Street, where New Orleans-based developer Joe Mann’s firm, Verdad Real Estate, is converting the long-vacant site of the old Trolley Stop Café into a 58-room property called the Warbler. The hotel, slated to open in late fall 2026, will mark the first ground-up hotel project for Verdad and represents a focused bet on the lower stretch of St. Charles Avenue as an emerging hospitality corridor.

Mann tapped New Orleans architecture firm EskewDumezRipple to design the 42,000-square-foot building, which draws on Streamline Moderne and Jazz Age aesthetics — bold geometries, fluid lines and an interior palette meant to evoke the social clubs and gracious service of that era. Los Angeles-based interior designer Jamie Bush, a Tulane School of Architecture graduate, is leading the interiors. Hotel operations will be managed by Lark Hospitality. Mann said he sees the project as part of a broader revival for a section of St. Charles that he believes has been underutilized relative to its pedigree. He is also in discussions to acquire an adjacent parcel on the avenue for a future development.

The Warbler’s food and beverage program is being developed in partnership with Neal Bodenheimer and Kirk Estopinal of CureCo., the New Orleans hospitality group behind Cure, Peychaud’s, Vals and Cane & Table. Their restaurant concept for the property, named Mildred’s, will function as a martini bar and restaurant occupying the hotel’s ground floor. A separate rooftop lounge called Upstairs will offer a more casual, poolside experience with views of St. Charles Avenue’s oak canopy. Chicago-based chef Andrew Zimmerman of Sepia, which has held a Michelin Star since 2011, is consulting on the culinary direction.

The site at 1923 St. Charles Avenue previously housed the Trolley Stop Café, the 24-hour neighborhood diner that closed in 2021 after nearly four decades. Mann said he was drawn to the address specifically because of St. Charles’s combination of foot traffic, architectural character and proximity to both the Uptown residential corridor and the Warehouse District. “This stretch just has so much potential,” he said. “We wanted to build something worthy of the address on St. Charles Avenue, a place with charm and character and a story to tell.” Sweet Olive, a design-focused real estate development firm founded by Dorothy Mann and Legier Goldsmith — cousins of Joe Mann — is also part of the project team.

The Warbler’s opening this fall will coincide with a broader wave of boutique hotel activity along St. Charles. Foundation work is also under way at a separate hotel project at 1304 St. Charles. If completed on schedule, the Warbler would be the first new hotel constructed from the ground up on St. Charles Avenue in roughly 30 years, adding 58 keys to an Uptown corridor that has historically been underserved by the city’s lodging inventory.

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