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An old run-down shack of a house sat meekly on a Fortitude Valley backstreet, rarely given a second thought by the multitude of cars that passed it by each day. To most, it was an eyesore belonging to a cranky old man who would never relinquish ownership. But to one dreamer, it was the site that would one day be home to a glorious feat of design – a 21-room boutique hotel where the beauty was in the details, with a rooftop bar that would glitter under the night stars, alive with laughter, energy and indulgent cocktails. The dreamer was local entrepreneur Damian Griffiths. And the hotel, which took up residence in 2008, was Limes Hotel – Australia’s first member of the coveted Design Hotels group, and a world-class addition to Brisbane’s landscape.

Understated urban elegance embraces you from the moment you enter Limes Hotel, and immediately you feel transported to a place faraway from everyday life. What at first glance appears like any other boutique hotel soon reveals itself as an ingenious oeuvre of well-considered design and painstaking attention to detail. Free from ostentation, the true beauty of this boutique hotel is its pure simplicity – everything is where it intuitively should be, everything has a purpose, and everything has been touched by an impeccable hand of design.

This is exactly what Damian had envisioned as he stood on Constance Street, weaving the first threads of his dream. Having been to Europe and seen how small buildings in tiny backstreets of Paris and Barcelona were being converted into cosy boutique hotels, he had longed for something similar in Brisbane. 
So combining his entrepreneurial nous with a background in budget accommodation, he decided that in order to see his dream come true, he would have to build it himself.

After initial rejections from the Brisbane City Council to build on the narrow site in Constance Street, Damian sought the advice of a town planner. Finally, he was granted approval to build a small hotel, but while his head was brimming with ideas, he struggled to find someone who could help make them a reality. 
“I’d been to three different architects and I don’t think any of them could get what I was about,” he recalls with frustration. “All of them had the negative view that I was building on too small a site – they couldn’t see that you could build a hotel there.”

It was then, somewhat fortuitously, that Damian came across a magazine article profiling the greatest emerging design talents in Australia – one of whom was Brisbane-based designer Alexander Lotersztain. 
From the duo’s very first meeting, Damian knew he had found his co-collaborator. “I needed someone who was young and had that ‘buzz’,” he says. “From the beginning Alex saw the idea – the one I had, but didn’t know how to put in place. 
He just picked up the whole project and saw nothing but positives in it all. Alex is very good at listening to what the client wants and then putting his spin on it and making it reality. 
He brings all his energy to the table and makes it happen. He’s got this worldly experience and sees ideas and where to put them.”

With the design expertise in place, Damian set about putting his plan into fruition. “We started just with the hotel, but then a few months later I was concerned that there weren’t enough rooms and I began to make some noises with the council about adding more. They wouldn’t give me any more rooms, or any more height on the hotel – they thought I was already doing way too much on this small block of land,” he divulges with a cheeky grin. “Then I had the idea for a rooftop cinema, and I went back to the council the next day and pitched the idea to them.” Much to Damian’s surprise, the council’s response to the suggestion was not only positive, but it went so far as to suggest that he would also need a bar on the hotel’s rooftop. “I hadn’t been game to ask for a bar,” Damian laughs. 
“And here they were suggesting to me the very thing that I wanted most!”

Soon Damian saw his dream materialising before his eyes. “Suddenly there was no resistance to the hotel and everything was full-steam ahead,” he recounts, smiling. “I called Alex straight away and said ‘what about a rooftop bar?’ and he just took it and ran with it.”

What followed was an enviable pilgrimage that saw Damian travel the globe in search of the elements that would compose the perfect boutique hotel. “I spent a lot of time looking at boutique hotels around the world and went and stayed in plenty of them,” Damian explains. “I made a big point of going and talking to people in different cities. I went to Barcelona to talk about rooftop bars, and to Paris and Singapore to speak to hoteliers. People provided information that they usually would never give freely – everything from opening their books up, to detailing the specifics of how they operated. To get to talk to other people about what the problems were, it really helped me focus on making the experience better and what to insist on in my own hotel.”

Attention to detail has been the focus for Damian, whose years of experience in the accommodation industry have taught him the biggest design afflictions and flaws in building a hotel. “Limes has never been about doing something for money,” he says humbly. “I think with boutique hotels you do it with your heart. A small hotel has to be very much about the personality of the staff and how you operate, because you’re so hands on in every respect. I think that part of the reason why people stay in small hotels is because it’s like staying in someone’s home. So it’s as if we’ve got a big house with a bar on the roof – it’s a tiny building but there’s always so much going on here.”

On contemplation of what has been his own most memorable hotel experience, Damian can’t go past the New Majestic – a chic 30-room hotel in the heart of Singapore’s historic Chinatown. “I’m always still taken 
by the New Majestic,” he reveals. 
“What they’ve done there is very fresh and creative.”

The Singaporean designer domicile is just a sample of the elite company that Limes now keeps as a member of the coveted Design Hotels association. “I was nervous that Design Hotels wouldn’t recognise Limes and that they might not see it as impressive enough,” Damian recalls of the application process to the exclusive group. “But the CEO said that as soon as he received the plans and saw the facade, he knew that it would be quite different. I remember when the staff from Germany first came and had a look – I was really on tenterhooks. But they said ‘this is exactly the kind of property we look for’.”

Damian’s love for hotels and big cities, he reveals, stems from his childhood growing up in country Queensland. “My childhood dream was to move to the city and to live in a skyscraper,” he laughs. “My parents are farmers and I think I get my work ethic from my family. I was a lawyer, but the lure of business got me out of that – I always wanted to run my own business and work for myself.”

Finding people with a similar work ethic to join him in his endeavours has been one of Damian’s greatest challenges. “I think it’s just convincing other people to come on the journey with me,” he reveals candidly. 
“It’s a constant challenge to keep finding people to help you – you can’t build a hotel business without having key people behind you. I’ve been very lucky to be able to find people who have come on the journey.”

When it comes to success, Damian is exceptionally humble in its application. “I think I’m a work in progress,” he shrugs good-naturedly. “Success can be measured so many ways and not always financially. 
It can be in your personal life, or your business life, or in your relationships with people. I’m constantly trying to improve the situation for everyone and I think if you can achieve something like that, you’re doing well.”

Perhaps a part of his country upbringing, what Damian admires most in other people is their willingness to simply try. “I’m very much motivated by the underdogs of the world – small people who take on big things and who dare to have a go,” he says passionately. “Often people get so hung up with planning things that they take so long to happen.”

Had Damian fallen victim to a similar fate, Limes might never have existed, and even its success to date has taken him by surprise. 
“I don’t think I ever expected that it would take off the way it has. When I look back and see what was meant to be a small 21-room hotel become what it has, I’m just amazed. It wasn’t mapped out this way, 
but it’s happened.”

And for Damian, that is proof of what happens when you throw off the bowlines, and simply set sail to wherever life takes you, no matter what challenges might await you. “Keep on trying and give things a go,” he muses happily. “You’ll never know unless you try.”

Interview and Photography by Mikki Brammer