Former Alabama quarterback Greg McElroy has bought a condo-hotel unit at Alum Tuscaloosa, a 116,000-square-foot luxury development that broke ground last week near the University of Alabama campus, and joined the board of the hospitality company behind it. The project, which calls for 68 luxury condo-hotel units along with a private members' clubhouse, rooftop lounge, chef-curated dining and meeting and event space, is the flagship for a company that says it wants to bring similar properties to more than a dozen other college towns.
McElroy, who quarterbacked Nick Saban's first national championship team at Alabama and now works as an ESPN/ABC college football analyst, joined Alum's board and purchased a unit in the development, according to AL.com. He said joining the board and investing personally was a chance to help build something Tuscaloosa can be proud of for fifty years, not just one football season, and he believes Alum is building a communal destination the city has needed for a long time.
Alum Tuscaloosa broke ground on October 19, and the finished building is planned as a seven-story structure with the 68 for-sale units and two levels of underground parking, according to worksarchitecture.net. The firm's description calls for a mix of one-, two- and three-bedroom residences with 10-foot ceilings. Alum CEO David Vialli has separately described the project as 68 condo units capable of converting into 104 hotel keys, per Hotel Dive — a figure that stands in contrast to a 2022 report that described the project as a seven-story, 92-room hotel, according to the Tuscaloosa News.
Jeter and a Business Model Built on Shared Ownership
Alum's roster of backers extends beyond McElroy. Derek Jeter joined the company as a brand ambassador, board adviser and investor, according to a company announcement carried by PR Newswire, which also detailed the Tuscaloosa development's planned amenities and confirmed the company has partnered with Legends to operate its private clubs. Vialli said of McElroy's involvement that there's no one better to have in Alum's corner, adding that McElroy understood the project before groundbreaking and that his investment and active role reflect a shared belief in its potential.
The appeal of the model, per the same announcement, is that owners can use their units themselves and place them into a managed rental pool when they are away — a hybrid of for-sale residence, hotel room and investment property. Alum has signaled ambitions to scale well beyond Tuscaloosa, though reports differ on the scope: the company has described plans to scale to 30 to 40 developments nationwide, while a 2024 report pegged the target at 25 to 30 locations costing roughly $80 million each, built at a pace of about three per year, according to the Sports Business Journal.
A Pipeline Stretching From Oregon to Indiana
Alum has identified Eugene, Ann Arbor, Columbus, Norman, South Bend and Lexington among the college towns where it plans properties, and Vialli has said the company is negotiating roughly 15 active deals for future locations. Near the University of Oklahoma, Alum Inc. is planning a luxury, college sports-focused hotel in the Campus Corner area that would include one- to three-bedroom suites and a 300-person event venue for university and civic functions, with construction on that project targeted to begin in early 2027, according to KFOR.
Hotel companies broadly are leaning into college towns because of their stable demand patterns, the same Hotel Dive report notes, a dynamic playing out visibly in Tuscaloosa itself. A $150 million Sports Illustrated-branded riverfront resort is also under construction in the city, with 161 units and roughly 12,000 square feet of restaurant and retail space, according to Skift. That resort, situated about a mile from the University of Alabama campus, is expected to open in 2028.
A Lodging Market Already in Expansion Mode
Tuscaloosa's hotel market has been on an upswing for years, giving developers reason to keep building. The city had slightly more than 4,400 hotel guestrooms as of 2022, while visitor spending reached $895 million that year, up 19.5% from the year before, per an HVS report carried by Hotel News Resource. Thirteen hotels opened in the city over the eight years covered by that report, including six in just the preceding four years, with downtown additions like the AC Hotel by Marriott, Homewood Suites by Hilton and the 112-key Alamite.
Timelines for Alum Tuscaloosa remain unsettled in public reporting. A University of Alabama feature stated the project was slated to open for the 2026 football season, while Hotel Dive reported separately that no timeline or opening date had been announced. With the groundbreaking only just completed, both the final marketable room count and a confirmed opening date remain open questions as construction gets underway.
