The Opening of Sanchez Suites

And the closing of Hypolita 

At the beginning of 2020, the pandemic happened and by March 2020 TeamBonding, our live event business lost all of its future bookings. Nobody knew how long it was going to last and for a couple of months in St. Augustine, people stopped coming.  We approached our landlord and decided that we weren’t going to be able to continue with our original guest house on Hypolita Street downtown. We were saddened by it but we didn’t know what the future was going to bring and we needed to make sure that we were able to pay the mortgage on the new house. He was kind enough to allow us to end the lease early.   

As our event business was able to pivot to virtual events, we were able to spend the winter in St. Augustine and work remotely from January to April 2021.  After a few months, people did start coming back and we adapted to the Covid policies and rented our one guest house in the second half of 2020 and again after we left in April. Right before were scheduled to return to Boston, a house went for sale, just a few blocks away and right near the Fountain of Youth. It was a very cool house, a Southern dogtrot house with a warehouse right behind it.  We took a leap of faith and bought it. In August 2021 we introduced Sanchez Suites.   

Wendy was really good at decorating and designing by this point and she really outdid herself with the artwork and the furniture, the adding of color and the renovation of the bathroom in the studio. Guests that stay at this house love it as much if not more than they did the other houses. As of this writing, we have 254 reviews and 98% of them are 5*reviews we have been awarded as an Airbnb Superhost seven different times as well as a preferred partner for VRBO.   

In January 2022 Wendy and I stayed at Sanchez Suites while we went through the permitting process to turn the warehouse into an industrial-style vacation rental.  We hired an architect and a builder and are currently creating a three-bedroom, two-bath vacation rental behind Sanchez Suites.   

You may be wondering what we know about renovating a house from the ground up. In 2019 we renovated our house in Sharon, Massachusetts which is now our primary residence and our empty nesting house. It is across from the lake and the design and the artwork are fun and colorful, and it overlooks the lake where I grew up.  

This project, this industrial vacation rental is going to be the best one yet.  One-of-a-kind won’t really describe it.  You’ll be able to stay at it with your friends and family and we hope to have both properties connected so you can stay with a larger group/family.