By this time next year, it’s likely that the former Miners National Bank in downtown Pottsville will be the The Rosalia luxury hotel.
The Rosalia will have about 30 hotel rooms and multiple venue and event spaces for conferences, parties, and business meetings. The breathtaking lobby of the former Miners Bank will be used for events like weddings. A day spa will be located on the ground floor.
Work is expected to begin soon to transform the former bank into a luxury hotel. On Tuesday, the new building owner, Bill Metzinger, and the drafters of the business plan for the hotel, Hannah Corbacio and Nick Hair, announced that The Rosalia will be open by Spring 2026.
“We started out trying to open a hotel last February,” Corbacio said. “At that point, we thought it was going to be like three to five bedrooms, a small reasonable project.”
Those plans changed drastically when the couple entered the Schuylkill Ignite business competition in 2024. It forced them to, among other things, find a location for their proposed business.
Corbacio said she and Hair drove by the former Miners Bank one day and saw a For Sale sign outside. Hair told Corbacio that he used to do his banking in there with his mother and they said they then became focused on making the building central to their business plans.
“We were like, it has to be this building, whatever it takes to make it happen.,” she said. “We really ended up building the business and the business plan around this building because we just loved it so much.”
There was just one problem. Joining the Ignite competition scaled the business idea to a point where Corbacio and Hair needed a backer to get it off the ground. Luckily for them, Metzinger was a judge in the competition.
The Rosalia didn’t win that competition but it hasn’t slowed down the project.
Metzinger, who has completed several other large-scale development projects in Schuylkill County in the recent past, said he just completed the purchase of the downtown Pottsville property on Monday. He’ll be leasing the property to Corbacio and Hair to run the Rosalia from it. This will be Metzinger’s first project in Pottsville.
“Because the size had scaled so drastically, we needed some kind of investor or business partner, someone that could actually make it happen. That’s how we ended up with the lovely Metzingers here,” Corbacio said. “We’re just really grateful that they have taken this chance on us and believe in the project and believe in us.
Metzinger provided some more insights on why he decided to make this investment in Pottsville and the Rosalia.
“It’s no secret, this is something this area truly needs,” Metzinger said. “We have a goal to work together to deliver it. We feel like this is going to be a spark that Schuylkill County certainly needs and especially Pottsville.”
Metzinger sees his investment in the city as something that could lead to future investments by others
“We find that if you’re the first one through the brick wall, a lot of people could potentially follow,” he said.
Metzinger said he, his wife, Jackie, Corbacio and Hair could not have gotten to the point they reached on Tuesday without help from state, county, and local elected officials and from members of the business community.
“This was definitely not just the four of us that made this happen,” Metzinger said.
In addition to overnight lodging, Metzinger said meeting space is also in demand in Pottsville. He said too many businesses are taking their meetings out of the area to spaces that can accommodate them.
The Rosalia will have four or five larger spaces – ranging from a couple hundred to 2,000 square feet in size – for meetings and other gatherings.
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