Dec. 26–As the race to develop more hotels in Rochester picks up speed, a project to build a 91-room hotel is gearing up in the Kutzky Park area.
A group of local investors led by Nick Pompeian and Harshal Patel plan to build a four-story Fairfield Inn & Suites on the site of the current Courtesy Inn, 510 17th Ave. N.W., near the Miracle Mile shopping center. Fairfield is Marriott’s budget brand.
“We think it’s an incredible site. Several restaurants are within walking distance. It’s extremely visible from U.S. 52,” Pompeian said. “We think we’re positioned perfectly for a hotel. We think it’s going to be a home run.”
If things go according to plan, demolition of the old 44-room hotel could happen as soon as February. Parts of the Courtesy Inn date to 1952, when Marcel Prow opened Prow’s Hotel. Construction of the Fairfield Inn is expected to take between six to eight months.
The developers have met with the Imagine Kutzky Group to discuss the project, which resulted in the addition of signs for the adjacent bike path and public benches to the plans.
“We want to be respectful and make it more neighborhood friendly. They seemed to support our ideas,” Pompeian said.
The Fairfield project is one of many new hotels planned for Rochester.
A 108-room Homewood Suites on Second Street Southwest and 83-room La Quinta Inn and Suites at Shoppes on Maine are wrapping up construction. Another hotel is said to be in the planning stages near the La Quinta development. Two other hotels — a 77-room Comfort Inn and Suites and a 109-room Staybridge Suites — are slated to be built in early 2014 along West Circle Drive in front of Costco.
In downtown, The Broadway at Center mixed-use project, proposed by Andy Chafoulias’ Titan Development and Investments, includes a 150-room four-star hotel. International investors, which purchased the seven-story Associated Bank building on South Broadway, reportedly plan to demolish it and construct a five-star hotel on that site.
The city has 5,359 rooms available now, but Brad Jones of the Rochester Convention and Visitors Bureau estimates Rochester could hit at least 6,000 rooms by the end of 2014. By comparison, Minneapolis proper has about 10,000 rooms. Rochester’s hotel boom is starting to bring it into the range of larger cities with comparable medical institutions. Baltimore, home to Johns Hopkins, has more than 10,000 rooms, and Cleveland reports having about 21,000 rooms.
Developers say the recent multibillion Destination Medical Community initiative spearheaded by Mayo Clinic is firing the construction fever.
“I think with announcement of DMC and everything, people kind of gotten a little crazy with it,” Pompeian said. “In my view, I think what it’s going to come down to is your location. The closer you are to the central core, mainly Mayo and Saint Marys, the better you’re going to be. We just feel with the product that we have, at the price point we’re going to be at and with our location, we think it’s going to be fantastic.”
