Plans in the works to build a new hotel at Centerra Resource Park on Route 120 in Lebanon are now waiting for approval from the town Department of Planning.
According to Tim McNamara of the Dartmouth Real Estate Office, which currently owns the land, the hotel will include 121 guest rooms and corporate meeting space. Unlike the Marriott Residence Inn, also located at Centerra, the proposed hotel would not be intended for extended stays. The new hotel chain has not yet been selected.
"Centerra would then have an extended-stay hotel and a more conventional hotel," McNamara said.
As for why a second hotel should be built at Centerra, McNamara said it was because of demand from local businesses within the office park and from Darmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, located across Route 120.
"There's been a tremendous demand ... for two things: a place where vendors and visitors can stay for short periods of time and also for meeting space. There's a real dire need for corporate meeting space," McNamara said.
The hotel will not be built by Dartmouth.
Instead, the College will sell land within the office park to Norwich Partners, a private developer in Norwich, Vt. Norwich Partners will build the hotel and retain ownership of the land in the future.
The Real Estate Office is currently applying for modifications to the business park's initial town approval, which only permitted the construction of one hotel on the premises.
"We're going to go to the [Lebanon] planning board and try to get them to allow a second hotel to go in. ... We don't think it will be a problem," McNamara said.
But according to Paula Maville of the Lebanon Department of Planning, no such amendments have been made to a site's approval in the past. "We've not had it happen before," she said.
Maville said the situation was unique to Centerra, Lebanon's only planned business park.
Still, McNamara expects the "couple-step process" of negotiations with the planning board to be successful.
"If they started construction this year, they could probably be open by late 2004 or 2005 sometime," McNamara said.
