December opening planned for hotel in former home of Visitation Academy

By RYAN MARSHALL

rmarshall@newspost.com

After delays because of a fire and a deadly pandemic, the opening of the Visitation Hotel in downtown Frederick is finally going to happen.

The 65-room boutique hotel on the former site of Visitation Academy, the Catholic all-girls school on 2nd Street in Frederick, is tentatively scheduled to open for business Dec. 12. Developer Jim O’Hare said he’s confident about meeting the projected date.

Workers were working on some finishing touches Monday as O’Hare and Lance Jaccard, a partner and architect on the project, stood in a small lounge area near the front desk in the building’s lobby.

Visitation Academy opened in 1846 and closed in June 2016, citing low enrollment.

The site was used as a hospital during the Civil War, and nuns lived on the property until 2005.

A cemetery in one corner of the property holds the graves of 125 nuns, with simple stone crosses and new metal nameplates identifying each occupant of the cemetery.

They were able to identify each grave through meticulous records kept by the property’s former operators, O’Hare said. Other signs of the property’s history show throughout the building.

Rooms and hallways of the Marriott-affiliated hotel are decorated with a “treasure trove” of artifacts and memorabilia provided by the school’s operators, O’Hare said.

Colored squares of light dance on a table in the lobby, shining through a stained-glass window in a nearby stairwell.

A few steps away, the Wye Oak Tavern restaurant occupies the (See HOTEL A10)

The Visitation Hotel in downtown Frederick is shown on Monday.

Staff photo by Katina Zentz

(HOTEL from A1) space that was the school’s now-deconsecrated chapel, with large stained-glass windows and statues of kneeling angels looming over the restaurant’s bar in the space that was formerly the altar area.

The restaurant will be a steakhouse, serving steaks, chops, and meat and fish from the Chesapeake Bay region, said Bryan Voltaggio, the television celebrity chef and executive chef of the new restaurant.

He also wants it to function as a tavern where the community can gather.

His previous Frederick restaurants, Volt and Thacher & Rye, were very much about tasting menus and creating a dining experience, Voltaggio said.

He wants the new space to have a lighter feel.

“We want this to be an everyday restaurant,” Voltaggio said.

Getting the hotel open has been a journey since the owners bought the building in 2017, O’Hare said.

The pandemic set them back about two years. A fire in April 2023 caused about $4 million in damage and delayed the opening about one more year, O’Hare said.

The hotel’s 65 rooms include nine extended-stay alternatives, and construction has begun on a building of seven condominium units.

Another building with 10 condo units has already been completed, O’Hare said.

A third building, with an undetermined number of condo units, is still several years away from being built, he said.

The facility contains several meeting spaces that can accommodate 10 to 12 people, and a larger event venue in the school’s former auditorium.

That venue has booked three weddings for the fall of 2025, O’Hare said.

Much like Voltaggio’s hopes for his restaurant, O’Hare hopes the hotel’s neighbors will come in to use the small coffee shop in the lobby, and the facility will become a central point for others in the city.

“We hope to be an amenity to the Frederick business community, and all of our neighbors,” he said.

Jim O’Hare, bottom-left, the hotel’s developer, and Lance Jaccard, a partner and architect, pose for a photograph in the bar area of Wye Oak Tavern at Visitation Hotel Monday in downtown Frederick.

Staff photo by Katina Zentz