County to revisit options for planned Kimpton Hotel site

As recently as November 2014, Rod Connelly was confident his vision for a Kimpton Hotel on county-owned land at U.S. 301 and Main Street would come to fruition.

Now, although Connelly is reportedly still pursuing those plans, the county is likely to reexamine its options for that land after the developer failed to close on a deal at the end of the year.

Connelly pitched the county on the hotel project in 2013, as the county solicited proposals for the .95-acre tract it owned at 20 N. Washington Blvd. By February 2014, he had gained approval from the County Commission to proceed with his plans, with a closing date on a land-swap deal set for Dec. 31.

Although development group SHD Partners submitted preliminary plans for the 10-story, 150-room hotel to the city in November, the deal with the county was never finalized — and so, county staff is preparing to revisit the solicitation process for the land in question.

County spokesman Drew Winchester said staff didn’t have a precise timeline for when it would begin exploring its options for the downtown parcel in earnest. He said staff plans to field proposals via the same process that produced the original Kimpton Hotel project.

“What's likely going to happen is we're going to initiate an invitation to negotiate process to have folks offer their vision and their plans for the property,” Winchester said.

When the original invitation to negotiate went out in 2013, the county received just one other proposal, which would have created an office to house the headquarters of a regional bank. The land is currently used as a surface parking lot.

Connelly did not respond to requests for comment, but an email from Downtown Economic Development Coordinator Norm Gollub to city staff suggests the Kimpton project isn’t dead yet. In response to an inquiry from City Manager Tom Barwin, Gollub said SHD Partners is still actively pursuing the project despite the expired contract.