A full-service, high-end hotel could be built downtown on the site of College Park City Hall after the city council voted Tuesday to consider selling the property to be redeveloped.
The city will be able to add this project to the tax increment financing plan that developers hope will pay for the university’s nearby East Campus development. Officials hope to see plans by next month for a Hilton or similar hotel on the site, but they said they will also consider non-hotel ideas.
City Hall would move to another site in College Park.
The timetable for the project is unusually rapid for College Park because it is tied to the timetable for East Campus, which has been in the works for far longer than the city’s plan, in order to secure financing for both projects.
The only council member to oppose the city’s “expression of interest” in selling City Hall was District 2 Councilman Jack Perry.
“I don’t know that we’ve had enough time to really discuss it,” Perry said.
But most council members were supportive of the idea.
“This project is needed to maintain the existing downtown on par with East Campus,” District 2 Councilman Bob Catlin said. “The existing downtown needs to match its shininess, its newness.”
Perry also expressed concern a new hotel on the City Hall site would compete with a hotel planned for the corner of Route 1 and Paint Branch Parkway in the East Campus development. But university Vice President for Administrative Affairs Doug Duncan, who is working on East Campus, said the university didn’t care which site had the better hotel, as long as one was built.
“We clearly need a full-service hotel in College Park on Route 1 in the immediate area of the university,” Duncan said. “If they can get one, great. If we can get one, great.”
Duncan said it would be up to the hotel companies to decide if College Park could support two upscale, full-service hotels. The university would likely use such a hotel to put up visiting lecturers and other guests.
Although city officials have said they are open to a variety of options, their stated informal preference at this point is for a five- to six-story Hilton hotel, another aspect that Perry objected to, saying he preferred the idea of a high-rise.
“If that’s a classy hotel at five floors, maybe I don’t understand class,” he said.
Another recent attempt to build a hotel on Route 1 fell through when the county did not grant developer Mark Vogel a tax increment financing deal. The plan the city would use is tied to that of East Campus, which is now under county review.
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