Development in Downtown Louisville is now officially very exciting—soon construction crews will be in every corner of the core city with a variety of new projects. The latest it yet another hotel on the corner of West Market Street and Seventh Street on the site of a large surface level parking lot.
Local developer Steve Poe of Poe Companies is partnering with attorney and businessman Tim Mulloy to lead the development team on the $23 million project, reports Chris Otts today at WDRB. The Homewood Suites, an extended-stay hotel under the Hilton banner, would climb eight stories on the prominent corner site owned by Mulloy’s family.
This project is particularly welcome in an stretch of Downtown dominated by streetlife-deadening parking lots and garages. According to Otts, the hotel will forego its own parking, instead opting to partner with the Parking Authority of the River City to fill an underutilized garage around the corner at 120 South Sixth Street.
The site is a block east of the soon-to-open Holiday Inn Express at Market and Eighth streets and a block south of the 21c Museum Hotel.
According to an initial rendering, the new building appears to complete the street wall on Seventh Street between Main and Market. It’s unclear at this point how the Market Street frontage is arranged, as a gap is shown between the hotel and the adjacent Republic Bank building that appears wider than the two-lane entrance to a parking garage.
Horizontal lines shown on the building facade appear to correspond with adjacent building heights in an effort to lend context to the design. We’ll follow up when more design information is available.
The team told Otts that the hotel will cater to businesspeople staying for extended periods in the city or convention-goers in town for a week or more. Each room will have its own kitchen and the hotel will feature an indoor pool, fitness center, and interior courtyard with a fire pit. No word on how many rooms are included or whether retail is part of the plan.
Otts said the project is expected to break ground this summer and could open in late 2017.
Poe previously developed the Aloft Hotel at First and Main streets, the Marriott at Third and Jefferson streets, and is working on the expansive RiverPark Place development on River Road at the foot of Frankfort Avenue. Mulloy is the chairman of the Downtown Development Review Overlay (DDRO) committee.
The rest of the development team includes REI Real Estate Services and Mulloy’s brothers Pat Mulloy and Mark Mulloy, Otts reported. Indiana-based White Lodging will manage the hotel once it opens.
Excellent development. Let’s pray for retail and hope that this pushes the city to finally do something with it’s giant parking lot behind city hall. And maybe this will help us stop haemorrhaging conventions.
another 8 storie deplicated building,,, like all the others
taller
Wanna stop hemorrhaging conventions? Bring back nude dancers.
Love replacing a parking lot. Glad for it – thank goodness Molloy’s decided to transition to better use. Now..can we go for something other than the “2010” design? Open a new playbook!
Um … Isn’t there a conflict of interest that Mulloy is on the DDRO and is a partner in a project, and then his family members are given contracts on top of that? Did anyone else notice? I’m happy to be corrected if I’m mistaken but it looks suspicious.
Thoughts???
Concerning the DDRO, it’s standard for members to recuse themselves from hearings if there’s a conflict of interest, which I’m sure would happen in this case.
Although a positive addition to downtown, another small hotel project its not something to get too over excited about IMO. If this boon continues and god forbid gets to much bigger, I forsee more desirable buildings in the future being torn down to make way for more hotel rooms to make up for all the smaller projects done in the past. Prime real estate downtown should be set aside for high density projects and the small player should be directed towards the fringes
It seems like we’ve already torn down virtually all of the old buildings that are even somewhat derelict, so I don’t know how much more we really have to lose; we’ve done a really great job of it already.
Finally! The City & BOZA’s long-entrenched policy of approving demolition for parking lots so that developers can (easily) come in & develop pays off. Once.
It seems pretty fixed and a major conflict of interest for the Malloy family to be on the DDRO. They need to resign their positions or give up their “pet” self serving projects.