Dec. 31–Redwood City has received an application to build a five-story hotel next to the city’s waterfront.

Land for the hotel, located in the residential One Marina site, would need to be purchased from builder Paul Powers.

South Carolina-based OTO Development submitted its application in November, according to city Planning Manager Blake Lyon.

The hotel envisioned for the nearly 3-acre site at 650 Bair Island Road would boast 176 rooms, a pool, spa, fitness center and a parking garage with roughly 180 parking spaces, Lyon said Monday.

The city’s planning commission is expected to review the application before the end of March, Lyon said.

The site is ideal for a hotel because it would create a “buffer” between the One Marina homes and Highway 101, Lyon said.

OTO Development has built hotels in partnership with several well-known chains, including Hyatt, Marriott and Sheraton, according to the company’s website. The company is also developing a Hilton Garden Inn in Palo Alto, on El Camino Real near Arastradero Road.

CEO Corry Oaks said in an email Monday that it would be “premature” to comment on the application because OTO Development was so early in the approval process with Redwood City.

“We are excited to have the opportunity to speak with the city about the possibility of delivering a low impact, high quality amenity that adds significantly to the local tax base and activates land that is currently vacant,” Oaks added.

A waterfront hotel was part of a project Powers pitched more than a decade ago called Marina Shores Village. After it was shot down by voters in 2004, he returned two years later with the scaled-down One Marina residential project, which is now being built in phases.

The hotel market is stronger than it’s been in the past six years, Powers told The Daily News in an email.

Other developers with dreams of building hotels have made the same assessment. Earlier this month, David Bohannon told Menlo Park planning commissioners that he is in negotiations with a hotel developer for his Menlo Gateway project, which was approved three years ago by voters. And in November, the San Carlos City Council voted to spend $13.7 million to buy four acres on the city’s east side in anticipation of finding someone to build a hotel there.

“The hotel market is very cyclical,” Lyon said.

Cities are hungry for new hotels because of the revenue they generate. Redwood City and Menlo Park’s transient occupancy tax is 12 percent of the room rate charged by the hotel operator. The tax is 10 percent in San Carlos.

Email Bonnie Eslinger at beslinger@dailynewsgroup.com; follow her at twitter.com/bonnieeslinger.