Jim Fair
A four-story, 100 room Hampton Inn is scheduled to be open in two years at this site.
The Hilton-branded hotel, with a minimum of 100 rooms, and a 300-space garage is a partnership between Sycamore Greer LLC and the City of Greer. The hotel will be built at the site of the former The Tire Exchange on North Main Street.
No projected cost was available for the hotel. Upon agreement the hotel is expected to be available for occupancy in 24 months.
The Hampton Inn will be a traditional model with a small meeting area and serving a continental breakfast.
Sycamore will purchase the 2.6-acre site and will build the hotel. The city will acquire property back from Sycamore on Jason Street to build the garage. Two commercial and retail parcels developed by Sycamore, and a pedestrian walkway between Cannon and North Main Street constructed by the city, are part of the downtown development.
Sycamore will lease 90 parking spaces from the city at $30,000 a year for 30 years, according to the agreement.
The city’s investment includes reimbursing Sycamore $1.8 million for infrastructure costs and will issue public bonds for $10-12 million, for construction of the garage, to be paid over a 25-30 year period. City Administrator Ed Driggers said no allocation of tax millage will be used for the debt payment.
DHEC has labeled the property as a Brownfield site because of the environmental contamination from former businesses, including a gas station. Sycamore Greer will demolish the existing structures and remove the debris, satisfying DHEC’s Voluntary Cleanup Contract.
“They have the responsibility for any environmental concerns relative to the site they are acquiring,” Driggers said. “We will also have that responsibility for the parcel we are acquiring on Jason Street.”
The city, under definition, Driggers said, “identified the site as blighted property, predominantly because of the abandoned buildings on that site. This is an opportunity to eliminate that and eliminate any environmental concerns on that site as well,” Driggers said.
The hotel is in the design phase with a predominantly brick veneer exterior in keeping with the city’s downtown district.
The hotel/garage complex satisfies city leaders for a lodging destination and solves a slowly declining lack of parking coupled with downtown’s business growth.
“We literally worked on this project four years,” Mayor Rick Danner said. “This establishes another anchor in the middle of downtown. We have the City Municipal building on one corner and the hotel will be on another.”