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

LAKE PLACID — Essex County’s Industrial Development Agency may give tax breaks to the developer of a Lake Placid hotel.

The Essex County Board of Supervisors — with the exception of Moriah town Supervisor Tom Scozzafava and Crown Point town Supervisor Charles Harrington, who were absent — voted last week to let the county Industrial Development Agency provide financial assistance, in the form of tax breaks, to Dual Development, the company behind the proposed demolition and rebuild of the Quality Inn on Saranac Avenue in Lake Placid.

The developers’ request for financial assistance will come before the IDA’s board one more time this month, according to Olcott. If approved by the board, the developer would be excused from paying up to $1 million in sales tax on materials for the hotel rebuild.

The developers initially asked the county IDA to consider providing them with mortgage tax recording and property tax abatement, sales tax exemption, and a payment-in-lieu-of-taxes agreement, which would give the developer a tax break for a few years. But the county IDA decided to only offer the developers the sales tax exemption, according to IDA Co-Director Jody Olcott.

The IDA has provided other Tri-Lakes hotel developers with similar assistance in the past, most recently the Hotel North Woods in Lake Placid, which is currently being remodeled, and the new Saranac Waterfront Lodge in Saranac Lake.

The IDA Board of Directors’ next meeting is 9 a.m. on Thursday, June 23 at the Saranac Waterfront Lodge in Saranac Lake. If approved by the board, the IDA will “close on the project within the next couple of weeks,” Olcott said Tuesday.

This past December, the developers also asked the North Elba Town Council to consider granting them a payment-in-lieu-of-taxes agreement. The town declined. Though PILOTs are common in other areas, it’s rare for this town to approve PILOT agreements for hotel developers. However, North Elba town Supervisor Jay Rand said Tuesday that the town did submit a letter in support of the developers’ application for assistance from the county IDA.

“It’s a good project; obviously we’d like to see it happen,” Rand said. “They asked us to write a letter to the IDA, which we did.”

The developer has told the IDA that it plans to start demolition of the old hotel in July or August. The developer has told the state, which awarded this project a $3 million grant through the Regional Economic Development Council Awards in 2019, that the project should be complete by April 2022.

Bhavik Jariwala, who has represented Dual Development while the company secured permits for this project, could not be reached by deadline Tuesday.

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The details

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Dual Development plans to demolish the existing hotel and rebuild it on the same footprint, but with 99 more rooms, for a total of 191, and an updated look, including a new stone veneer and clapboard facade. There will be 226 off-street parking spaces to serve the hotel, according to architectural designs submitted to the town-village Joint Review Board.

Some of the details of the project appear to have changed. The estimated cost of the project has risen by about $6 million, to $36 million altogether, since plans were submitted to the state for grant funding through the Regional Economic Development Council Awards in 2019.

The estimated number of jobs created as part of the project — 51 jobs, as of 2019 — also appears to have declined. The county IDA says the project is now expected to result in 35 “full-time equivalent” jobs. If the hotel doesn’t create at least that many, or if it isn’t rebuilt, the IDA can rescind its financial support for the project.

The plan was for the hotel to fall under the Homewood Suites and Tru brands, which are part of the Hilton brand family. But the hotel will now be Cambria branded, according to documents submitted to the town-village Joint Review Board in March. Cambria is part of the Choice Hotels group, which includes the Quality, Comfort, Sleep, Clarion, Econo Lodge and Rodeway Inn brands. In a letter to the Review Board, a representative of the developer said the brand change was a result of “setbacks” brought by the coronavirus pandemic that have “impacted the lodging industry as a whole.”