The 151-unit hotel is located outside campus boundaries on Washington Circle at 23rd Street and Pennsylvania Avenue across from the sight of the new GW Hospital.

“The hotel will allow us to generate new revenue and help us continue to provide students with the best education,” said Gretchen King, director of Media Relations. “We are happy to bring in Potomac Hospitality services in hopes of keeping it well managed in order to continue to keep it as a gateway to the Foggy Bottom area.”

King said the amount GW paid for the property is confidential.

She said negotiations lasted a few months and went smoothly with the past owners.

In the summer of 1999, GW purchased the Howard Johnson Hotel across from the Watergate complex and quickly converted it into a residence hall, now known as the Hall on Virginia Avenue. But King said the University intends to keep One Washington Circle as a hotel and has no plans of changing its status.

GW plans to keep the hotel as an investment property similar to The George Washington University Inn on New Hampshire Avenue, which GW bought in 1994, King said.

Michael Thomas, president of the Foggy Bottom Association, said he is skeptical of the University’s pledge to keep One Washington Circle as a hotel.

“The problem the community has with the purchase is that GW doesn’t mind its boundaries very well,” he said. “As long as it stays a hotel, we don’t care who owns it, but if the University changes its mind we will have a problem because we would like to see a variety of private property uses in the area.”

Some students said they question the University’s priorities.

“We need our dorms fixed and I think we should finish all the work we have already started here,” sophomore John McDonough said.

King said that the hotel is an important investment and will serve as a source of revenue.