Choicehotels.com
The designs of various Cambria Hotels around the country.
Thomas Breen photo
HighSide Construction Management’s Doug Miller: No design rendering yet. Check out the Cambria site for examples.
The developers of a planned new six-story, 130-room hotel won a key city sign-off in their bid to build the next large project on the “Route 34 West” superblock.
At Wednesday night’s regular monthly City Plan Commission meeting on the second floor of City Hall, commissioners unanimously approved the site plans for the prospective 130-room hotel to be built on the vacant lot at 480 Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd., at the northeastern corner of the superblock bounded by MLK to the north and Dwight Street to the east.
Local attorney Chris McKeon and HighSide Construction Management Director of Preconstruction & Business Development Doug Miller explained that the new hotel will be run by Cambria Hotels, an upscale chain run by Choice Hotels International, Inc.
Wednesday night’s City Plan Commission meeting.
The hotel is the latest planned development to come from a 2014 Land Disposition Agreement (LDA) that has already led to the construction of Continuum of Care, Rite Aid, and The Learning Experience. The superblock is part of a stretch of the Oak Street neighborhood that was razed during mid-century Urban Renewal to make way for a highway that never came to be.
Commissioners had already approved back in 2014 the master plan for the superblock’s redevelopment, which included even then plans for a hotel. Wednesday night’s review represented the first time that the body had seen detailed site plans regarding parking layout, height, lighting, and landscaping for the prospective hotel.
Local attorney Chris McKeon.
“We are now at a point where we have a site plan,” McKeon said, that has emerged from many meetings between the hotel developers and city staff. He said Choice International has put together a project “that I think will be exciting for the city and that works both operationally for the hotel operators and completely complies with the zoning ordinance for the city.”
Project engineer Jeff Lebeau.
McKeon, Miller, and Freeman Companies Project Engineer Jeff LeBeau said the hotel will be adjacent to the Continuum of Care building and to a planned new four-story parking garage that commissioners signed off on in July.
The hotel will be roughly 71,430 square feet in total, will have a two-lane drop-off loop by the front door, and a 19-foot-wide loading space on the west side of the hotel. The hotel developers have an agreement with Route 34 Phase II LLC, a holding company owned by Robert Landino, for the use of 100 parking spaces in the soon-to-be-built garage next door.
City Plan Commissioner Ernest Pagan.
Do you have any design renderings showing what the finished hotel might look like? City Plan Commissioner Ernest Pagan asked.
Not yet, Miller replied. Per the LDA, the final design will have to be approved by city staff. But one can go to Cambria’s website to see pictures of the dozens of other hotels it runs around the country.
Miller said he did not have an estimated construction start date for this project.
The planned development is one of a slew of new hotels slated for, or recently opened in, the Elm City. Randy Salvatore’s The Blake Hotel opened on High Street in January. The new Hotel Duncan opened on Chapel Street in September. And Spinnaker Real Estate plans to knock down the former Webster Bank building on Elm Street and construct in its place a new 132-room Hilton Garden Inn.
Are the hotel rooms only going to be market rate? Or will they have rates for low income travelers?