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Hearing tonight on Quality Inn rebuild in Lake Placid

Developers seeking $6M state grant through REDC

Ryan Williams, an architectural designer with HBT Architects, showcases preliminary concept designs for the Quality Inn rebuild project at a review board meeting Sept. 18. (Enterprise photo — Elizabeth Izzo)

LAKE PLACID — A public hearing on the proposed rebuild and rebranding of the Lake Placid Quality Inn is slated for tonight.

The Lake Placid-North Elba Joint Review Board will hear public comment on the project, which would see the Saranac Avenue Quality Inn demolished and replaced with a new three-story building under the Hilton Tru-Homewood Suites banner, at 5:30 p.m. today in the North Elba Town Hall.

The public hearing comes as the North Country Regional Economic Development Council seeks a $6 million state grant to help fund this project, which is expected to cost upward of $30 million and create 51 new jobs, according to a progress report from the NCREDC.

The $6 million funding ask for this hotel rebuild is the largest request among this year’s 11 NCREDC priority projects.

State REDC grants to private developers are given as reimbursements after projects are built and promised jobs created.

If approved by the review board, the existing Quality Inn hotel building near Peninsula Way Road would be demolished and replaced with a new L-shaped structure on the same footprint. The new building would be approximately 102,935 square feet — only 700 square feet larger than currently, according to Aaron Ovios, president of RMS. However, the new space would have double the number of rooms inside, from 92 rooms to 191.

Of those rooms, 90 are expected to be Home2 extended-stay suites, and 93 would be Tru by Hilton rooms, which are “mid-priced” and “marketed to younger tech-savvy and design-minded travelers on a budget,” according to the NCREDC progress report.

The facade and general appearance of the building would be virtually identical to the original design, with the exception of a few alterations that were necessary to meet the 35-foot height restriction after the North Elba Zoning Board of Appeals denied the project a variance to exceed that height.

The building would now three stories, not four as it was before, and the roof would be flat rather than pointed in three sections, according to Ryan Williams, an architectural designer with HBT Architects. The existing hotel is two stories high.

At full occupancy, Ovios said, the new hotel could cause an increase in traffic on Saranac Avenue between 3% and 4%, and there could be an added traffic delay of no more than 22 seconds for drivers trying to leave the property.

Dual Development is the company behind this project. Bhavik Jariwala, a partner at Dual Development LLC, told the Enterprise earlier this year that the company hoped to start demolition this year and open the new hotel by 2022, but he could not be reached to ask if that timeline has changed.

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