Suisun to Consider Hampton Inn's Plans for Waterfront

Suisun to Consider Hampton Inn's Plans for Waterfront
By Ian Thompson

SUISUN CITY - The Suisun City Planning Commission is expected to give its blessing to the first hotel to be built in Suisun City in about a half-century.

Basin Street Properties is proposing to build a 63,000-square-foot, four-story hotel. The New Hampton Inn & Suites would be located just north of Driftwood Drive and next to One Harbor Center along with a smaller two-story commercial or retail building.

This is one of two Hampton Inn & Suites hotels that Basin Street is building. The other is a 113-room, three-story hotel in Windsor. Construction is expected to start in the spring on that project.

The commission meets at 7 p.m. today in the Suisun City Council chamber where it will hold a public hearing on the hotel's permit.

The hotel, if approved, will be the first one to call Suisun City home since 1958 when the Arlington Hotel, the last of the town's once numerous hotels, burned to the ground.

This hotel is aiming at both business and tourists. It will feature suites with decks that face toward the Suisun City harbor, according to the planning commission report written by Community Development Director Heather McCollister.

"It will fit in well with pedestrian access along the waterfront," McCollister said of the project.

Basin Street Properties, a 30-year-old commercial property owner and developer with projects in Northern California and Nevada, is building the hotel.

The waterfront hotel is one of three major commercial development projects that Suisun City Manager Suzanne Bragdon has said should significantly help generate more money for the city's coffers.

If built, the hotel is predicted to bring in up to $300,000 a year in hotel taxes, about $10,000 in property taxes, create 25 full-time jobs and generate more customers for the city's waterfront restaurants since it won't have a restaurant of its own.

This is the second time that the city has tried to bring a hotel to town.

In 2000, another group proposed building a $7 million, three-story Quality Inn & Suites near the new proposed hotel's site.

Increasing construction costs and troubles with construction unions prompted the developer to drop the project in 2002.

Reach Ian Thompson at 427-6976 or at ithompson@dailyrepublic.net.

At a glance

Who: Suisun Planning Commission
What: Public hearing on a hotel proposed for the waterfront.
When: 7 p.m. today
Where: City Council chamber. 701 Civic center Blvd.
Info: 421-7300