Hotel developer planning to add a second Bangor hotel on Sylvan Road

BANGOR, Maine — A Maine-based hotelier plans to build an 82-room hotel, the fifth planned in the city since 2006.

Freeport-based Maine Course Hospitality Group, which owns the 90-room Courtyard Marriott adjacent to I-95 on Sylvan Road, plans to build a second hotel, a TownePlace Suites, right next door.

Bangor’s planning board approved the plan during a meeting last week.

City planner David Gould said Tuesday that Maine Course, which owns more than a dozen hotel properties in New England, originally hoped to build a restaurant on the site, but “their desire to have more rooms outpaced the interest in a restaurant.”

The four-story, 60,000-square-foot hotel will have a different focus from the Courtyard property, according to Sean Riley, president and CEO of Maine Course.

“We didn’t want to build anything that’s going head-to-head against our other hotels or hotels in the market,” Riley said Tuesday.

TownePlace will be geared toward extended stays of a few weeks or months, Riley said. It will cater to business executives, construction workers, visiting doctors and researchers and others who relocate to Bangor for an extended period of time, but not long enough to warrant a move. 

Riley said he hopes to see about half the rooms, which will have kitchenettes, used by extended-stay customers, with the other half available for shorter stays. It’s a niche that hasn’t been filled to this point in Bangor, Riley said. The hotel also could draw Canadian tourists who come to the Bangor Mall area to shop and sometimes stay for a few days.

Rates will be based on the length of the stay, with people staying six months paying a different rate than people who stay for one month, he said.

The two hotels will share an expanded parking lot on Sylvan Road. The new hotel will add about 20-25 jobs for Bangor, according to Riley.

Since the Courtyard Marriott was completed in 2006, three other hotels have been built in Bangor — the Hilton Garden Inn on Haskell Road and Hollywood Casino on Main Street in 2008 and the Hampton Inn across the street from the Hilton in 2011, Gould said. Ocean Properties, which owns more than 100 hotels and resorts in North America, plans to build a 130-room hotel next door to the new Cross Insurance Center and has acquired a 3-acre Dutton Street lot for the project from the city.

Gould said the city saw a similar influx of hotels, especially in the Odlin Road area, in the mid-1980s during a short U.S. economic boom that sparked some growth in the Queen City.

Riley said construction could begin as early as next month, with the hotel opening next summer. He said the estimated cost of the project is still being determined.

“The Bangor Courtyard has done well for us,” Riley said. “We love the market.” 

Source : http://bangordailynews.com/2013/07/23/business/hotel-developer-planning-to-add-a-second-bangor-hotel-on-sylvan-road/