Perspectives & press.
Our point of view on adaptive reuse, hospitality real estate, and the markets we build in — and where GTB Group is in the news.
A sanctuary is one room. A hotel is thirty-seven.
The discipline of a great conversion isn’t deciding what a building could become. It’s understanding what made it worth keeping — and carrying that forward.
By GTB Group · Aug 20, 2026 · 4 min read
Read the essay →
ZenStay
What a hotel with no front desk is actually like.
ZenStay visits Casa Iglesia to make the case that losing the front desk isn't a downgrade — it changes who's actually available to help, and gives the lobby back to guests as a room worth sitting in.
Read at ZenStay ↗GTB Group
A sanctuary is one room. A hotel is thirty-seven.
Every story written about Casa Iglesia describes what the building became. Far fewer describe the constraint that shaped it, which was not budget and was not entitlement. It was geometry.
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SoCal Magazine
Casa Iglesia: Santa Barbara's Historic Church Reborn as a Boutique Hotel.
A trip to Santa Barbara reveals Casa Iglesia - a 1924 First Christian Church seamlessly reborn as a 37-room luxury boutique hotel that balances historic architecture with tech-forward simplicity.
Read at SoCal Magazine ↗
ZenStay
Technology should disappear, not take over.
ZenStay makes the case that the best hospitality tech is invisible — quietly removing the friction of arrival, keys, and logistics so the team's attention goes to the parts of a stay that are actually hospitality, not to screens and chatbots standing in for people.
Read at ZenStay ↗The Santa Barbara Independent
The Art of Adaptive Reuse.
The Independent visits Casa Iglesia — the 1924 First Christian Church reborn as a 37-room hotel — on the discipline of preserving what makes a building worth keeping.
Read at the Independent ↗GTB Group
The art of adaptive reuse begins before the acquisition.
Why the most valuable thing an old building offers is the one thing a new build can't buy.
Read article →Noozhawk
Santa Barbara church gets a second life as a hotel.
Noozhawk tours Casa Iglesia — a 1925 church reborn as a 37-unit hotel with its sanctuary preserved and a new open-air atrium at its center.
Read at Noozhawk ↗KEYT · News Channel 3-12
Historic Chapala Street church transformed into a boutique hotel.
KEYT reports on the two-year conversion of the 1924 landmark into a 37-unit hotel — its Spanish and Moorish detail preserved around a new open-air atrium.
Watch at KEYT ↗KSBY News
Historic church under construction to become a hotel.
An early look — mid-construction — at the plan to renovate the Chapala Street church into a 37-unit hotel while keeping its historic exterior intact.
Watch at KSBY ↗
Noozhawk
Planning Commission backs a first-of-its-kind hotel-condo project.
Noozhawk covers the city's unanimous approval of our 1018 Garden Street project — now Casa Jardín — a first-of-its-kind, 13-unit hotel whose rooms can be individually owned and operated as hospitality.
Read at Noozhawk ↗