Two more hotels are coming to Ridgeland, and city officials say there’s still room to add more.
During a recent board of aldermen meeting, the mayor and aldermen approved the site plan and architectural review for a Holiday Inn Express and Tru by Hilton.
The approval comes days after the city’s moratorium on hotels expired. The moratorium originally began April 4 of this year and was set to extend 180 days. However, the moratorium was extended another 30 days in October, ending the ban on hotels and hotel construction on October 31.
The moratorium specifically excluded hotels that might be built in any overlay district, including Jackson Street and the Township, where Township developer Clint Herring will bring two new hotels in 2019.
“The moratorium was put in place to just review our current zoning classification,” Ward 1 Alderman Ken Heard previously told the Sun. “We’ll possibly implement a separate hotel class. Included in the hotel classification, we would address the different hotel qualities.”
During the moratorium, the city conducted a study with a combination of in-house and outside people to assess the industry and formulate a zoning class.
Young Strategies completed the study, which can be found at www.northsidesun.com.
“The study is to help us better understand the hospitality industry in general so we can make a better decision on the zoning classification, if we were to put that in place.”
“The board wanted to be sure. We’re getting a lot of requests for hotels,” Mayor Gene McGee said in April. “We want to use it in the best interest (of the city). We just want to look at that very carefully.”
The moratorium was extended in October when the board tabled the site plan and architectural review for three hotels — Tru by Hilton, Holiday Inn and a Holiday Inn Express — until the first meeting in November.
When the item came before the board again during the November 7 board meeting, developers Chico Patel and Todd Reeves had already decided to not move forward with the Holiday Inn, but they will still move forward with the Tru by Hilton and Holiday Inn Express hotels.
Once completed, the two new hotels will be located off I-55 north Frontage Road, south of the Holmes Community College gym, McGee said.
The completed study analyzed percentage of room rentals in the city and if there is still room to build more hotels.
The study is financed by the Ridgeland Tourism Commission, according to Heard, and studies the hotel and hospitality industry.
“In general, the hotel industry regulates itself,” Ridgeland Community Development Director Alan Hart said. “What we learned (from the study) was essentially, whenever you have occupancy as high as what’s being experienced in Ridgeland, hotels have a tendency to build more. If those numbers are below a certain occupancy standard, hotels don’t want to build. It’s very simple.”
Following the approval of the Tru by Hilton and Holiday Inn Express hotels last week as well as the Township hotels, Hart said he doesn’t expect any more hotel applications anytime soon.
“The quantity of hotels is not the driving force behind what’s good and what’s bad (in a city),” he said. “It’s more along the lines of the occupancy of those hotels, which are very well occupied in Ridgeland.”
Hart said the city’s hotels that already run along I-55 run at an occupancy rate of 85 to 90 percent. City-wide, hotels remain at about 65 percent occupancy.
“That’s a remarkable statistic… Anything over 60 percent, according to Young Strategies, is a very healthy occupancy rate.”
Ridgeland Hospitality LLC will own both I-55 hotels, according to developer Chico Patel, president of Heritage Hospitality Group.
“Heritage Hospitality Group is our umbrella company that essentially owns Ridgeland Hospitality and many other hotels across the country,” he said. “We were able to work with city leaders the last several months and ultimately produce what we think is a great product for us and the city of Ridgeland. Ridgeland is great hotel market… It is very exciting to have these projects in our backyard.”
