Five-story hotel expected to open April 2024..
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A five-story, 106-room TownePlace Suitesn by Marriott is set to be constructed on Commerce Drive. (COURTESY)
Visitors looking to spend some time in Lake City will soon have another option.
The newest project near Intestate 75 will be a five-story, extended-stay hotel about a block away on Commerce Drive.
The TownePlace Suites by Marriott hotel will have 106 rooms with a large meeting space and will be located on Commerce Drive next to the Texas Roadhouse restaurant and in front of the HCA Lake City Hospital.
The project is being financed by First Federal Bank and preliminary plans are for the hotel to open in April 2024.
Nick Patel, Lake City Hotels chief operating officer, said the project has been in the works for some time.
“Actually, we started this project a couple of years ago,” Patel said. “We bought the site in 2019 and then we worked on searching for a brand, as to which brand we should bring. Lake City definitely needs another extended-stay product.”
Patel said Lake City Hotels built the Homes2Suites by Hilton on Florida Gateway Drive in 2016 and that hotel has done well for them.
“We thought that as Lake City grows, that it needs another hotel with extended-stay features,” he said. “This particular hotel is going to be a beautiful exterior corridor hotel, almost-five stories. With the facade, it will look almost like a six-story building.”
All the rooms will be equipped with a cooking range, dish washer, a large fridge, a microwave oven, and all the utensils. The rooms will feature a fully furnished kitchen with stainless steel appliances and granite countertops, adjustable workspaces with built-in shelves and lighting, a large flat screen television and new bedding.
Most rooms will also have a home office suite, designed to provide guests with an abundance of storage and flexible space to spread out and make it their own.
“We do have a large number of rooms at this hotel which are one bedroom suites as well,” Patel said. “These are more or less efficiency apartments.”
The new property will offer studio, one-bedroom two-bedroom suites with fully equipped kitchens, as well as separate living/working and sleeping areas.
Patel said Lake City Hotels decided to bring another extended-stay hotel to the area because of how well the travel industry rebounded after the covid-19 pandemic. Last year was a good year for the hotel industry locally, he said.
“We felt that an extended-stay product would do well in this town because it not only sells for the transient traveler, but anybody who would like to stay for seven days or a month,” he said. “I think we’ll have a unique facility to stay.”
The facility will be backed by Marriott and its Bonvoy Loyalty program.
“We’ve been now in Lake City for almost 29 years,” Patel said. “We built hotels every few years based on the demand and where we feel things are moving. We also like the extended stay properties — they’re kind of recession proof. During the pandemic many extended-stay properties did well — the occupancy and operational statistics did not go down as drastically as the transient hotels, so felt it would be good for us for the future that we invest in extended stay properties.”