An an artist rendering of the proposed DoubleTree by Hilton hotel in Jamestown.
JAMESTOWN – The effort to renovate a downtown hotel and make it the city’s only full-service hotel, complete with a restaurant and conference center, will soon be moving forward.
That’s according to Jamestown Development Director Vince DeJoy, who said the renovation of the planned DoubleTree by Hilton will soon get underway with developers expected to complete work and have the hotel open by the Fall of 2017.
Monday night the Jamestown City Council helped to give the project a boost by the giving the developers, The Hamister Group, a $350,000 loan from the Jamestown Local Development Corporation (JLDC). Terms of the loan include 4.25 percent interest rate and is to be paid back within 10 years.
DeJoy said the loan was the maximum amount the JLDC is permitted to give to any single borrower, adding that because it was for over $100,000 the city council also had to sign off on it.
“This is just one of the funding streams that Hamister will be using in their $14 million renovation upgrade of to the property,” DeJoy said following the council vote. “This, along with our other public financing is a significant investment to make sure that this project goes forward and is developed in a timely manner.”
In addition to the JLDC loan, Hamister will also receive an additional $1.5 million in total loans from the Chautauqua County Industrial Development Agency, The Western Region Corporation Downtown Revitalization Loan Fund, and the Greater Jamestown Zone Capitol Corporation. DeJoy said the loans will be used to help leverage additional private investment money so Hamister Group can then begin significant renovation work.
“It will be a complete [interior] demolition. They’re going to strip the building down to the bones basically. They will be putting new windows on the outside. The rooms will be completely redone. The pool will be redone. All of the convention and meeting rooms will be redone, along with the restaurant. So it’s an extensive undertaking,” DeJoy said.
DeJoy says once completed, the hotel will be the only full-service hospitality center in the greater Jamestown area.
“In addition to having a full service hotel, what it means is that folks having parties and weddings here locally will have a good, new hotel to host those types of events,” DeJoy said. “We can also now go out and market Jamestown for conventions and meetings. There’s just a number of different ways to bring more people into Jamestown. More hockey tournaments and even some bigger events at the Ice Arena, which require a full service hotel and convention center.”
In 2013 the Hamister Group purchased the former Ramada Inn at auction and the following year it announced a franchise agreement with Doubletree by Hilton, with a plan of turning the building into a 146-room, full-service hotel and restaurant with 4,000 sq/ft of banquet and meeting space.
Initially the group had said it would open the hotel under the new franchise in the summer of 2015. However, unanticipated delays brought forward from the State DEC meant that Hamister would have additional unexpected renovation costs that pushed the schedule back.
“It was due to a combination of things,” DeJoy explained. “One was when they did an environmental assessment and they did the geo-technical drilling there was some petroleum residues that were found and the New York Department of Environmental Conservation was contacted. It was nearly a year-long investigation as to where the source of the petroleum was coming from and that was a million dollars extra. The roof was also a big issue and they had to get some special engineering consultation to stabilize the roof, so that also slowed down the progress.”
With the additional funding for the project, the Hamister Group is expecting to complete the renovation by the fall of 2017.
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