Developers to break ground for hotel in May

2nd hotel planned on Secor Road site

A 123-room Hampton Inn & Suites hotel and a Holiday Inn Express & Suites will be going up on the Secor Road site that formerly contained the Showcase Cinemas.

A group of developers said they will break ground next month on a 123-room Hampton Inn & Suites hotel on the Secor Road site that formerly contained the Showcase Cinemas.

And sometime this summer, they will start construction on a second hotel on the site, a Holiday Inn Express & Suites, advancing a timetable that originally called for the second hotel to be built a year after the first was completed.

Martin Yousif, a partner with Key Hotel and Property Management Inc., which plans to build the two hotels plus offices, two restaurants, and a small strip center on the site, said he and his partners decided to speed up their timetable after multiple aspects to their project came together quickly.

“Financing, site approval, land acquisition, franchising — our portion of this is about 90 percent complete,” Mr. Yousif said.

A site plan for the first hotel, a five-story, 18,520-square-foot Hampton Inn, was approved April 11 by the Toledo Plan Commission. A site plan for the second hotel, a 92-room Holiday Inn Express, is close to being ready to submit to the plan commission.

Each hotel will use about three acres, with the remaining seven acres used for additional tenants and parking.

“I think we are going to build the second hotel this year. I don’t know if we’re going to start them both at the same time though,” Mr. Yousif said. But the developers had received the go-ahead from both InterContinental Hotels Group, owner of the Holiday Inn Express chain, and Hilton Worldwide, owners of the Hampton Inn chain.

The project is being financed through bonds from the Toledo-Lucas County Port Authority, and with funding from Farmers and Merchants State Bank.

Road construction will disrupt traffic along Secor Road south of I-475 for at least the next six months, but Mr. Yousif said that won’t interfere with hotel construction.

The road construction has reduced traffic to one lane in each direction on Secor as gas lines, water lines, and the road itself are replaced.

“We feel the timing of this could not have been better for our project. The infrastructure for Columbia Gas will be completed by November of this year and we’ve been told the city pavement work will be done by mid-September, early November at the latest,” Mr. Yousif said. “All the infrastructure is being replaced, which is great for us. We’re very excited.”

Contact Jon Chavez at:

jchavez@theblade.com

or 419-724-6128.