The folks at Memphis’ newest boutique hotel don’t want anybody to wake up at Central Station Hotel and wonder where they are.

“The worst thing in the world is for a traveler to wake up and ask, ‘What city am I in?’” said Jeremy Sadler, general manager of the hotel in the historic Illinois Central train station.

“We want guests to know three things: They’re in Memphis, they’re in South Main and they’re in Central Station,” Sadler said.

In addition to creating a sense of place, the hotel’s designers and operators have gone to great lengths to make sure out-of-town guests have plenty of Memphians to rub elbows with; hence the outsized lobby and bar serving the 123-room hotel developed by Kemmons Wilson Companies and Henry Turley.

The Central Station Hotel is scheduled to open this week, possibly as early as Oct. 22, ahead of River Arts Fest Saturday and Sunday and the South Main trolley tour on Friday night.

Once the hotel gets a green light to book guests, the lobby bar, Eight & Sand, will be open to the public. Bishop, the hotel restaurant at the corner of Main Street and G.E. Patterson Avenue, is still in the works.

Eight & Sand features a soaring ceiling, walls of windows and comfortable furniture and is centered on a deejay booth and extensive library of Memphis music: vinyl albums, 45s, digital collections, and tape will stock 20,000 or more tunes to fill the bar and pipe in to guest rooms.

“Saying ‘eight and sand’ is like saying ‘break a leg’ in the theater world,” Sadler said. Eight is the highest setting on a train’s throttle, and sand was thrown on rails to prevent slippage.

Sadler said Central Station is a great fit with the Curio Collection by Hilton brand, which doesn't have a standardized design theme.

“It’s supposed to take on the feel of the city and the neighborhood it’s in. For us, it’s the South Main neighborhood and Memphis music.

“We recognize travel enthusiasts want to go to a place where the locals want to go, and so we want to be the place where the locals want to go," Sadler said. "There’s a couple thousand apartments in the neighborhood. We want those people to hang out here. 

“We want people to feel like it’s their living room. We want people from Memphis to feel like they’re just as welcome as our hotel guests,” Sadler said.

The hotel’s opening winds down the second revitalization of Central Station, after the vacant landmark's initial mixed-use development in the 1990s.

The first project put apartments on upper floors; an event facility called Hudson Hall in the old train station waiting area, on the lower concourse; an Amtrak waiting room and ticket office on the upper concourse; and a Memphis Police Department substation on the upper concourse.

Memphis Area Transit Authority contracted with developers Turley and Archie Willis in 2015 to create a $55 million, mixed-use redevelopment of Central Station. Apartments on the west side came first, followed by the opening earlier this year of Malco Powerhouse Cinema Grill & Bar.

Those who haven’t been inside Central Station in a while will find it has been rearranged.

Police offices have been replaced by the Amtrak station. The hotel’s main entrance opens onto the driveway that has provided parking, pickups and drop-offs for Amtrak passengers. Eight & Sand and a 5,576-square-foot ballroom area on the lower level.

The ballroom has already hosted a Memphis Symphony Orchestra board event, and the Downtown Memphis Commission’s annual Vision Awards program is booked for the space, director of sales and marketing Helen Nelson said.

Sadler came to Memphis from Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he oversaw the opening of another Curio historic conversion, the Tulsa Club Hotel.

Nelson came from the Hu. Hotel, formerly the Madison, and has experience at several Memphis area hotels.

They lead a staff of about 75 employees. Valor Hospitality Partners is the hotel’s management company.

The design incorporates many of the building’s historic features: original floors and millwork, interior transom windows and the station’s iconic neon signs: “Lower concourse to tracks 7-8-9-10” and “Upper concourse to tracks 1-2-3-4-5-6.”

Three of the station’s wooden benches have been kept on site.

“Obviously, since this was an old train station, we kept as many architectural features as possible,” Sadler said.

Guest rooms are on the second through eighth floors, with about 16 rooms a floor. Rooms have views of the city skyline, riverfront and nearby landmarks such as Earnestine & Hazel’s and the Arcade restaurant.

The developers sent Amurica photographer Jamie Harmon on a City of New Orleans odyssey to take photos along the old Illinois Central rail line between Chicago and New Orleans. Harmon came back with a couple of thousand photos, and Sadler guessed about 70 were chosen to be reproduced in various sizes to decorate guest rooms.

The hotel’s sounds are courtesy of EgglestonWorks speakers, designed by Memphis-based audio expert Jim Thompson.

Alex Turley, vice president of real estate for his uncle’s firm Henry Turley Co., was spinning vinyl records in Eight & Sand’s music center last week and reconnecting with deejay roots that stretch back to high school. Nearby, music curator Chad Weekley was organizing the collection for opening day.

Turley said the company’s involvement in the Central Station redevelopment goes back to 2012, when the transit authority advertised for a developer.

“We feel like it will be an authentic Memphis experience,” Turley said. “We feel like all of these things you see will distinguish the experience here from other hotels.”

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McLean Wilson, whose grandfather Kemmons Wilson founded the Holiday Inn chain in Memphis, said, “The first time I talked with Henry Turley about the project was in the fall of 2014, so it’s been a long time coming.”

“We wanted to do something special for our hometown, and I feel like we accomplished that. Now is the time for the rest of Memphis to either confirm or deny that,” Wilson said.

“The hotel’s all ready. Our staff is fired up. The rooms are ready,” he said.

“I think it’s going to allow the elements of Memphis to shine: the music, the arts. The design elements create a really great feel,” Wilson said.