Oct. 19–MONROE — A new 100-room hotel and retail center are the first phase of a firm's plans to develop 40 acres for commercial use just off of Interstate 75's Monroe exit.
Cincinnati Commercial Contracting plans to bring a new, limited-service or extended-stay hotel to the area just north of the corner of Ohio 63 and Senate Drive in Monroe, about a half-mile from Cincinnati Premium Outlets.
The hotel, which will be either a Hilton, Marriott or a Holiday Inn Express, will be located behind CCC's 11,000-square-foot retail strip center Retail 63, which broke ground earlier this year.
The hotel is expected to open by spring 2020. Mason-based Crestpoint Companies will be the developer, owner and operator of the as-yet-to-be-named hotel. CCC will be its general contractor.
The hotel represents an investment of as much as $12 million, said Kal Patel, Crestpoint's president and CEO. It will have approximately 100 rooms, a pool, fitness room, business center, meeting room and a dining area.
The retail portion of the development so far is set to include a Penn Station with a drive-thru , as well as a nail salon. Other tenants have signed letters of intent for the remaining spaces, which constitute about 8,000 square feet of space, said John Westheimer, president of CCC. One of them will be a cellphone store, he said.
Joshua Rothstein, a retail specialist with Blue-Ash based OnSite Retail Group, is listing the retail space for CCC.
"Monroe has never been hotter," Rothstein recently told this news outlet.
The retail development and the hotel sit on 18.5 acres of development-ready property, with the remaining 21.5 acres sandwiched between Senate Drive and Interstate 75.
At least one restaurant is looking to develop there, Westheimer said.
"The public streets (West and Heimer drives) are scheduled to be done by the end of November," he said. "That will help a lot."
CCC has been working to develop the property since 2015, Westheimer said. He said he is "amazed" at the interest the site has had in recent months.
"Usually you build these roads and they sit for a while. This is really good activity," he said.
Monroe's Ohio 63 exit is an already established entertainment destination, and an area where the city wants to attract more investment. In 2015, the city sought and won state approval to create a Community Entertainment District for the area, allowing for up to 15 new permits to be issued for sales of beer, wine and spirituous liquor.
Regional attractions in the area include Cincinnati Premium Outlets, Miami Valley Gaming and Traders World and Treasure Aisles Flea Market. An area south of Ohio 63, IDI Logistics' Park North at Monroe, is attracting companies like Amazon, Hayneedle and Blue Buffalo to locate operations inside of fulfillment centers that are hundreds of thousands of feet in size.
