$10M hotel lands at Tri-Cities Airport
A $444 million Tri-Cities industry is going to get a little bigger this year.
A-1 Hospitality LLC, led by Tri-Cities hotel operator Vijay Patel, will build a 99-room Courtyard by Marriott hotel at the Tri-Cities Airport Business Park.
It announced it had inked an 80-year deal to lease land from the Port of Pasco for the site near the corner of Argent Avenue and North 20th, near the entrance to the airport last week.
A-1 previously purchased neighboring property from the city of Pasco for a dining and retail complex. The two properties will be developed in phases.
Construction starts this fall on the four-story hotel.
The project will cost more than $10 million.
The hotel will cater to business travelers and provides a welcome shot of new rooms to the airport market, which includes the Red Lion Pasco and Best Western, both on North 20th Avenue.
According to Visit Tri-Cities, the region's tourism bureau, there were 1,149 hotel rooms in Pasco in 2017, a 20 percent increase in just four years.
Pasco hotels operated at about 58 percent occupancy last year, or 243,000 rooms sold over the year.
A-1 operates properties across the region under a variety of flags, including Courtyard by Marriott, Best Western, Fairfield Inn & Suites and Travelodge.
It owns and operates the Holiday Inn at Pasco's TRAC, and the historic Columbia Gorge Hotel at Hood River, Oregon.
A-1's Columbia Hotel Management arm will manage the new airport hotel. Idaho-based JRA Architecture and Planning is designing the hotel, and Richland-based Fowler Construction will build it.
The Port of Pasco and A-1 signed a 50-year lease that includes two 15-year options to renew.
That's the longest a port can lease land and gives the developer long-term control of the property.
A-1 will pay $28,000, or 1.25 percent of the hotel's gross revenue — whichever is greater — to lease the property.
Tri-Cities hotels offered 4,200 rooms in 2017, part of a tourism infrastructure that supports more than 6,100 jobs and $444 million in visitor spending annually.
This story was originally published June 18, 2018 at 4:24 PM with the headline "$10M hotel lands at Tri-Cities Airport."