By: Tim Mekeel, Lancasteronline.com
When hotelier Justin Shelton imagines the perfect site for an extended-stay property, his vision includes restaurants and a grocery store being within walking distance.
So when he thinks about his firm’s latest Home2 Suites by Hilton hotel, now under construction in the Belmont mixed-use development on Fruitville Pike, Shelton’s happy.
“We look for support amenities — restaurants, grocery stores, places to grab a beer and a bottle of wine. Obviously, Belmont brings all that and then some,” said Shelton on Wednesday.
York-based Springwood Hospitality, which Shelton serves as president, broke ground Friday on the 123-room, four-story hotel. Completion is expected in summer 2018, creating 30 jobs.
LNP reported in December that Springwood intended to develop a Home2 Suites hotel at the 1580 Fruitville Pike property, between Dillerville Road and the Route 30/283 interchange.
Though Shelton declined to disclose the Manheim Township project’s cost, industry sources estimated the total cost at $14 million.
That includes $2.5 million to buy the 5.4-acre site from Belmont’s developer, courthouse records show.
It also includes the cost of constructing the roughly 68,000-square-foot building — $7.8 million, according to a township permit. That excludes the cost of furniture, linens and other expenses.
The Home2 Suites, next to the historic Mayer-Hess farmhouse, on the west side of Fruitville Pike, is being constructed where the former farm’s barn once stood. (The barn was disassembled and moved to Elizabethtown, where it will be reassembled.)
Parts of the Home2 Suites and Belmont projects will address the accessibility of the hotel by car and the accessibility of Belmont by foot.
Springwood will pay for the creation of a right-turn lane into the hotel site from southbound Fruitville Pike.
Northbound Fruitville Pike will get a left-turn lane into the hotel property, at the expense of Belmont’s developers.
Belmont’s developers also will install a traffic light there, as was previously reported, and a crosswalk across Fruitville Pike.
When Home2 Suites guests walk to Belmont, they’ll find a Whole Foods grocery store and cafe, a state liquor store and a half-dozen restaurants, including a P.F. Chang’s. The stores and restaurants, dubbed the Shoppes at Belmont, are due to open in the spring.
“They can use the cross walk, go across the street and get to just about anything they’d want,” said Shelton.
Completion of the Home2 Suites, as well as hotels in Frederick, Maryland, and York that Springwood also has under construction, will give Springwood 11 hotels.
That total includes two on Lincoln Highway East, across the street from Dutch Wonderland and Applebee’s — a Tru by Hilton that opened in June and a Fairfield Inn & Suites that opened in June 2016.
While construction of the Home2 Suites just started, restoration of the vacant Mayer-Hess farmhouse’s exterior continues. Begun in late May, the work is costing $350,000.
A September completion is expected. The Shoppes at Belmont’s developer is paying for the work.
The brick mansion, painted white, was built in 1870. The three-story building contains about 5,000 square feet. An office tenant is being sought.