Founded in 2000 - The Flagstaff Hotel is a fortunate byproduct of a sequence of unusual events in Pittsburgh history. During the budget process of early 2000, the City, County, and State needed a large influx of capital. The City was tasked to arrange the sale of a valuable property asset - Flagstaff Hill in Schenely Park. The property in question was chosen due to the high cost of maintenance as a result of countless Frisbee Golf games, autonomous unmanned robot vehicle tests, and free movie screenings. The loss of this recreation space to Carnegie Mellon students was considered minimal given their general lack of residency and tendency to not vote in local elections.
One Carnegie Mellon University alumni, Simon Park-Granger, had fond memories of playing Frisbee Golf on Flagstaff Hill and decided to put his recent wealth earned during the short lived DotCom boom to use in a brick-and-mortar venture. He succeeded in out-performing the competing proposals (a strip mall, a mass-produced art factory, and an insecticide plant) and acquired the rights to the land an astonishingly fast 4-weeks after the initial public offering. The sale vote was held at 3 am in a room on the secure side of the Pittsburgh International Airport, this limiting public comments to those made by a few weary travelers whose connecting flight to Albuquerque had been canceled. As none were residents of Pittsburgh, their objections - and requests for the leftover pastries - were ignored.
Simon moved quickly and broke ground a few months later after a final Frisbee Golf competition was held. As part of his grand vision for a hotel in close proximity to Carnegie Mellon University, the hotel convention space includes a room large enough to host a regulation sized Frisbee Golf match. Special storage compartments around the room can be rolled into the space to act as reconfigurable barriers to enhance variability in the space.
The hotel itself, is contains all the modern amenities one would want: high-speed internet access, exercise room, business center, two bars, and a deli/coffee shop.