Sept. 20–If you tried to play the defunct Center Valley Golf Club today, you’d have to navigate a challenging “corn hazard” to put your ball on the green.
But some of the crop — planted on the course by a local farmer — might soon be replaced by a new business-class hotel directly across Center Valley Parkway from the Promenade Shops at Saucon Valley in a plan alluded to by property owner Sierra Management about a year ago.
Allentown-based HMB Management has presented Upper Saucon Township with sketch plans for a five-story, 109-room hotel coupled with an 8,000 square-foot banquet hall or restaurant on the site.
With the proliferation of businesses, including Avantor Performance Materials, Olympus and Dun & Bradstreet, the Center Valley area requires more lodging options, said Sharyn Heater, Upper Saucon’s director of community development.
“I think there is a need in this area for a hotel in the township, there is so much here,” she said.
The hotel and a newly proposed office complex on Saucon Valley Road across from Penn State Lehigh Valley, are the first swells of what could soon become a new wave of development in Center Valley, said Peter Talman, senior vice president with commercial real estate firm Jones Lang LaSalle.
Jones Lang LaSalle represents the owners of much of the property in and around Upper Saucon’s Stabler Corporate Center, including Sierra which owns the former Center Valley Golf Club, and Lehigh University, which received a gift of 755 acres in the Stabler Center last year from the Donald B. and Dorothy Stabler Foundation.
The hotel, likely the kind with suites, would include a pool and serve mostly business guests staying several days or longer, Talman said. If all goes as hoped, construction could be completed as early as the end of 2014. It would take up about 5 acres of the 203-acre Center Valley Club property.
If built, the hotel would satisfy a glaring need for business-traveler accommodations in the Saucon Valley area, said Michael Stershic, president of local tourism group Discover Lehigh Valley. “It is something that will handle a lot of that Olympus traffic right away.”
Talman concurred that there is “pent-up demand” for accommodations from existing Center Valley businesses. “They ship a lot of their guests to hotels in other areas,” he said.
The hotel plan pales in comparison to the high-end conference center that was once envisioned for 18 acres adjacent to the golf course, also owned by Sierra. That plan, for a $40 million luxury hotel modeled after Greywalls in Scotland, has been shelved for now, said company president Greg Kessel.
There has been no shortage of speculation about the land since the course shut down in 2011. About a year ago, Sierra and the Sands Casino Resort Bethlehem shot down a rumor that the casino planned to purchase the Center Valley Club and return it to use as a golf course that would be associated with the resort.
HMB has not yet signed a contract with Sierra, Kessel said. The hotel proposal is a concept HMB is “running up the flagpole.”
HMB Management operates eight hotels, including the Holiday Inn Express near Dorney Park in South Whitehall Township and Holiday Inn Express and Eastonian Banquet Center in Palmer Township. It also operates Homewood Suites, Hilton Garden and Hampton Inns in New Jersey. Company officials did not return a call seeking comment Friday.
If the new hotel were to take business away from anyone, it would be hotels in the Bethlehem area, Stershic said.
The proposed office complex on Saucon Valley Road, submitted to the township for zoning approval by developer Capital Planning Wealth Management, is comprised of a 15,000-square-foot building and a 6,000-square foot building on a 5-acre parcel that is part of Stabler’s land donation to Lehigh.
Capital Planning officials did not return a phone call seeking comment.
Demand for top-tier office space has been gradually increasing over the last several years in the Lehigh Valley, Talman said, and as the economic recovery continues, the market will only get tighter, leading developers to propose adding new inventory.
“In terms of office space alone, the Lehigh Valley is tighter than it has ever been in its history in the category of office buildings I would deem trophy-class,” Talman said.
Talman said the vacancy rate for “trophy” class offices in the Lehigh Valley stands at just 4 percent, while the rate for all class-A office space is 11 percent.
Downtown Allentown’s Neighborhood Improvement Zone and its powerful tax-financing have grabbed most of the office development headlines in the last year or two, but with lots of available land and a location convenient to major highways such as Interstate 78, Center Valley is poised for growth, Kessel said.
Kessel, whose company owns several parcels in Stabler Center, in addition to the Center Valley Club, said he had gotten plenty of interest from business tenants both large and small. That’s led to a lot of buzz about the Center Valley area in commercial real estate circles.
“The phones are ringing, where for a number of years they weren’t,” Kessler said. “And there is a lot of attention being given to the Stabler Center in particular.”
Scott.kraus@mcall.com
610-820-6745
