It’s Official: City, Developers Complete Deal to Build New Saline Hotel

Site of new Best Western Premier in Saline Michigan
Site on which our new Best Western Hotels & Resorts Premier hotel is to be built, photographed about an hour after the property was purchased. © 2018 d2 Saline, All Rights Reserved. USA

Right on schedule, official paperwork was signed and payment made yesterday for the purchase of land where our new Best Western Premier will be built.

Saline Lodging Group partners first pitched their concept for a Saline hotel to City Council during the summer of 2016. The City of Saline formally voted to green-light the project two months later. [1,2]

Less than eighteen months later now, preparations for construction can properly get underway this month.

“Today ‘The Hotel Story’ can pivot from one of ‘process’ to ‘planning,'” reported Mark Kuykendall, Saline Lodging Group managing partner.

“Of course that means moving forward with all the details of the build phase,” he continued.

“But it also means quickly adding and then shifting to a mindset of marketing the hotel. Many of our important bookings for 2019 will be made in the upcoming months. Again, we can now ‘officially’ start working on that business.”

A wide-range of other local stakeholders may want start thinking in these terms as well.

According to a 2016 Oxford Economics study, for every one dollar spent in a hotel on lodging, an additional $2.21 is spent at other area businesses — outside of and not affiliated with the hotel. [3]

Until this morning you may have thought yesterday was just another Wednesday in Washtenaw County.

But now you know that the deal signed and sealed at Absolute Title in Ann Arbor on February 28 is projected to bring in excess of one million new dollars to Saline each quarter starting next year.

Saline City leadership and the developers alike share credit for making this happen here.

References

  1. Best Western Hotel, Bigger Ace Hardware Store Pitched for Vacant Michigan Avenue in Saline” Bob Conradi (July 13, 2016) The Saline Post.
  2. Saline City Council Votes 5-2 on Purchase Agreement for Hotel” Bob Conradi (September 21, 2016) The Saline Post.
  3. Economic Impact of the US Hotel Industry” (June 30, 2016) Oxford Economics.
About Janet Deaton 57 Articles
Publisher, Saline Journal