The Lake Placid Quality Inn is seen here in December 2020. (Enterprise photo — Elizabeth Izzo)

LAKE PLACID — Representatives of a development company planning to revamp the Saranac Avenue Quality Inn asked the North Elba Town Council for a tax break last week. The town council denied the request.

Representatives of Dual Development LLC, the company behind a planned rebranding and rebuilding of the Quality Inn, asked the town council on Dec. 8 to consider authorizing a PILOT agreement, or payment-in-lieu of taxes, that would give the developers a tax break for the next 10 years.

Jack Kelley, the director of economic development for Prime Companies, spoke on behalf of the project before the town council last week. He was joined by Bhavik Jariwala, a partner at Dual Development LLC.

In his presentation, Kelley, who claimed to have broken the news of Lake Placid winning the bid for the 1980 Winter Olympic Games while working as a reporter for the New York Daily News, equated parts of the Adirondack Park to “a third world country,” and implored the town council to “stop the trend that’s happening in the Adirondacks” and grant this PILOT agreement to spur economic growth in town. Without a PILOT agreement, Kelley warned that the project may not happen.

“You could take the dot com burst, the Sept. 11 (2001) crisis and the 2008 financial crisis … this pandemc has hit the (hospitality) industry harder than all three of those combined,” Jariwala said.

Jariwala noted that the project is expected to bring 50 new jobs to the area, plus 250 construction jobs. He said the hotel would “provide more than $400,000 in occupancy tax” revenue to the county, plus “more than $750,000 in annual sales tax” revenue.

“We may be able to get this project started by next summer,” Jariwala said. That’s provided that the developer gets more lenders on board. Dual Development is also seeking help from the Essex County Industrial Development Agency.

The rebuild is a $35 million project, according to Jariwala. The developers asked the state last year, through the North Country Regional Economic Development Council, to fund $6 million of that. It was ultimately awarded $3 million in state grant funding late last year.

The developers have received approval from the Joint Review Board to demolish the existing Quality Inn hotel and rebuild it on the same footprint, and that approval is good for three years, according to town Code Enforcement Officer Michael Orticelle.

The plan that went before the NCREDC and the Joint Review Board showed that the company plans rebrand the hotel under the Hilton Tru-Homewood Suites banner and more than double the number of rooms, from 92 to 191. Of those rooms, 90 are expected to be Home2 extended-stay suites, and 93 would be Tru by Hilton rooms.

This project has been in the works for years. The project went before the North Elba Zoning Board of Appeals last spring because developers initially wanted the new hotel to be 19 feet higher than the local land use code permits, a request the board ultimately denied. A revised version of the project then went before the North Elba-Lake Placid Joint Review Board, and after a few revisions to the plan were made, recieved approval.

Dual Development plans to possibly convert the lower roadside building to workforce housing, according to Jariwala. That’s something new, and that part of the plan didn’t come before the Joint Review Board.

Town Councilor Derek Doty pointed out that although the developer planned to convert that building to workforce housing, with the added jobs, that new housing would likely only accomodate less than a quarter of its expected workforce.

PILOT agreements are common in other areas. Within the town of North Elba, however, it’s rare that elected officials approve them. Town Attorney Ron Briggs said last week that he believes the last time the town granted a hotel a PILOT agreement was in the 1970s. The town will sometimes grant PILOT agreements for affordable housing developments, but not often for businesses, according to Town Supervisor Jay Rand.

“We think the Quality Inn is a good project, but … we don’t issue a PILOT to private businesses out of respect for all of the hard work of other business owners and hotel owners who have achieved success without a PILOT agreement,” Rand said Monday.

The North Elba Town Council did not officially vote on denying the request for a PILOT agreement, but Rand said the town spoke with the developer and has informally denied the request.