The waterfront hotel that's stood across from Space Center Houston for years is getting a full identity change. The former Hilton Houston NASA Clear Lake, at 3000 E NASA Parkway in Nassau Bay, Texas, is being converted into Compass Hotel by Margaritaville, complete with a lazy river, marina access and a scaled-down room count as construction moves forward toward a late 2027 opening.
The transformation traces back to August 2025, when Dallas-based real estate investment trust Ashford Hospitality Trust completed the sale of the 242-room hotel to Nassau Bay Resorts LLC for $27 million in cash, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. As CultureMap Dallas reports, Nassau Bay Resorts LLC acquired the property that year and the coming hotel will sit roughly 250 miles, or about a four-hour drive, from Dallas.
A Smaller Hotel With Bigger Amenities
The redevelopment isn't a simple rebrand. Development plans call for converting the building's top three floors into residential condominiums, a move that will shrink hotel inventory to 170 rooms while doubling the property's existing 5,000-square-foot ballroom space, per the Houston Chronicle's reporting on the project. CultureMap Dallas puts the eventual room count at 229, a figure that reflects planning documents cited in its own coverage of the makeover.
Official property plans for Compass Hotel Nassau Bay, laid out by Margaritaville Resorts, describe more than 14,000 square feet of meeting and event space alongside a dedicated adult waterfront pool and a separate family pool built around a lazy river. CultureMap Dallas adds that guests can also expect marina access, boat parking, four Margaritaville-themed restaurants, a retail store and fully reimagined guestrooms, all part of what the outlet describes as a comprehensive transformation of the 14-story building.
Layoffs Preceded the Construction Push
Getting to that finished product required shutting the hotel down first. A Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification letter submitted by hotel operator Remington Lodging & Hospitality LLC disclosed that 65 employees were laid off when the property temporarily closed on July 31, with staff granted no bumping rights to displace junior workers. CultureMap Dallas reports that Nassau Bay Resorts LLC filed a notice with the Texas Workforce Commission in June indicating it would lay off all employees effective that same date, with the coming renovations cited as the reason for the workforce reduction.
Kam Miramadi, speaking on behalf of the new ownership, said Nassau Bay Resorts LLC is excited to introduce Compass Hotel Nassau Bay, according to CultureMap Dallas. Compass Hotels launched as a Margaritaville brand in 2020, and the company describes its broader mission as expanding Jimmy Buffett's easygoing vibes into a global empire, per the same outlet — a nod to the brand's namesake hit song.
Betting on NASA's Backyard
The location isn't an accident. Space Center Houston, the official visitor center for NASA's Johnson Space Center, sits directly across from the hotel site and draws approximately 1.3 million visitors annually, according to Space Center Houston. Clear Lake itself adds another draw, with 19 marinas and more than 7,000 boat slips that make it the third-largest recreational pleasure-boat basin in the country, generating roughly 10% of gross sales across Bay Area Houston, per the City of Seabrook.
The Nassau Bay project isn't Margaritaville's only Texas bet. The company is also working on a $250 million, 334-room property on Galveston Island, part of a broader master plan detailed in Hoodline's earlier coverage of the Galveston mega resort. According to the Hotel Dive, the brand's Texas growth strategy also includes a $100 million resort on Lake Texoma in Denison, a revived $1 billion Latitude Margaritaville residential community in Texas City, and its first state resort at Lake Conroe, which opened in 2020.
The strategy extends beyond Texas, too. Margaritaville broke ground in 2026 on a similarly styled $38 million, 150-room Compass Hotel near Florida's Port Canaveral, also targeting a late 2027 opening, a project Hoodline covered in its report on the Cape Canaveral spaceport hotel. Both projects reflect a consistent pattern of placing boutique Compass Hotels near major national space hubs, pairing built-in tourist traffic with the brand's beach-resort branding.
Regional tourism numbers help explain the appetite for new hotel construction. Galveston County saw its annual visitor count climb to 8 million in 2022, a 25% increase over 2021 levels that spurred a wider surge in hotel development across the area, according to CoStar's reporting on the region's hospitality market. Whether the Nassau Bay conversion keeps pace with that late 2027 target, and how many of the laid-off workers get rehired once the doors reopen, remain open questions as construction moves forward.
