Modesto leaders move forward with spending to explore downtown hotel. What’s next?
The Modesto City Council has approved spending $84,600 for the first steps of investigating whether a high-end hotel can be built in downtown, and set aside nearly $297,000 for the remaining steps.
This is in an addition to the $59,300 the city spent for a consultant’s study that concluded a 200-room, high-end hotel is feasible if several conditions can be met, including renovating Modesto Centre Plaza, the city’s downtown convention center and developing parking for the project. The city has estimated the Centre Plaza renovations at $3.2 million.
The study concluded a developer could build a hotel if it cost no more than $37.2 million (which does not include the renovations or parking) and anything more than that would require the city’s financial help.
Council members voted 4-2 at Tuesday’s meeting to budget $381,080 for the city’s work on the potential project, including spending as much as $84,600 for the first two steps.
Those steps are working with a consultant to find potential developers and for some of the project’s legal work and are expected to take 21 to 35 weeks.
Council members would approve spending more money for additional steps if they decided to move forward after the first two steps.
Council members Kristi Ah You and Bill Zoslocki voted against the spending Tuesday.
They said in interviews after the meeting that if there were a demand for this project then hotel developers would have been lining up at City Hall to build one.
They said this was not a good use of taxpayer dollars, especially when the money could be spent on making Modesto more attractive to private investment in its downtown, such as improving parking management.
“If it’s a good decision (to build the hotel), it would have been built a long time ago,” Ah You said.
Mayor Ted Brandvold and council members Tony Madrigal, Doug Ridenour and Jenny Kenoyer voted in favor of the spending. Councilman Mani Grewal did not participate because as the owner of a Modesto hotel he has a conflict of interest.
The city is considering the development of a hotel in Modesto Centre Plaza’s 1.5-acre parking lot. The hotel would complement the 258-room DoubleTree by Hilton, which is connected to Centre Plaza.
The Centre Plaza lot is too small for a hotel and parking so parking would need to be provided off site. The consultant’s study says a renovated Centre Plaza is necessary to draw more conventions and visitors to increase demand for rooms at DoubleTree and the new hotel.
The study claims the hotel would create 106 jobs (though skeptics say many would be low paying), have an annual economic impact of $8.6 million as well as triple the number of conferences and conventions at Centre Plaza from six to 18 and significantly increase the number of people attending business meetings.
Tuesday was the second time the council had considered spending money on the project. Council members voted 3-1 in favor of the project but it needed four votes to move forward.
Brandvold delayed bringing the project back to the council to allow the city more time to review the project. But the council Tuesday essentially approved the same item as it considered in October except city staff provided more detail on the costs for each of the steps.
This story was originally published February 13, 2020 at 12:21 PM.
