After years of delays, a downtown hotel and conference center is the closest its been in years to finally breaking ground.
Its developer, Tim Dora, president of Dora Hotel Company LLC, told the Tribune on Thursday he is “committed” to the project and “believes in the product.”
How committed? He said he’s already spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in design and engineering work and in a franchise fee that cannot be recouped.
“I don’t spend that kind of money for nothing,” Dora said.
According to the Kokomo-Howard County Plan Commission, the development, to be built at 191 E. Superior St. in the block between Main and Union streets, is on the agenda for Tuesday’s Kokomo Board of Zoning Appeals meeting for a “maximum structure height” variance. Additionally, a petition for development plan approval at next month’s Kokomo Plan Commission meeting has also been filed.
The filings and Dora’s comments all point to the much discussed and much delayed project moving forward.
When asked how sure of a thing the development is, Dora said the only obstacle he sees at this point is too expensive of construction costs and too high of interest rates when the project goes out for bid.
“The only obstacle we have is inflation and interest rates, probably, and I’m 100% confident in the market,” he said.
If market conditions are not ideal come spring, Dora said he has no problem waiting it out.
“I’m not going to throw away my money,” Dora said. “If everything is not great in the spring, if construction costs are outrageous or interest rates are nuts then we’ll just sit on it and just wait. We’ll wait six months, 12 months, whatever we have to do.”
The hotel will still be a Hilton Garden Inn and have approximately 123 rooms and will include a restaurant and bar. The development is also still a public-private partnership between Dora Hotel Company and the local government. The hotel will be privately developed, while public money will be used for the conference center.
Howard County Commissioner Paul Wyman said Wednesday the county’s contributions total around $2 million. The county recently allocated $500,000 of its American Rescue Plan money to be used for its approximately $2 million contribution; county EDIT dollars will be used for the remaining portion. The development will also be bolstered by READI grant money.
“It’s very exciting,” Wyman said about the hotel and conference center. “This is going to be a wonderful addition to our downtown and will literally bring thousands of people a year to our community that will get to experience everything that’s so great about Kokomo and Howard County.”
Some details of the project, such as estimated cost, any money the city is contributing to the project, if it will include space for the Kokomo Automotive Museum, among others, are not clear. The hotel design itself will be mostly similar to what was announced in 2018, Dora said, though there are some differences.
The lack of details may be because the final development and financial agreements are not yet finalized and signed. Kokomo Mayor Tyler Moore said as much when asked Dec. 15 at his reelection event.
“Them getting the financing paper they’ll need, finalizing the designs because some of that has changed since the initial announcement they had done five years ago and then just a matter of timing,” Moore said when asked what still needed to be done. “We hope to break ground in April or May. … Mr. Dora is excited, especially since the announcement of the (EV) battery plant because he knows there will be support with executives coming and going. … That was definitely, I think, the final tipping point for him to commit and move forward with us.”
Unlike in 2018, when then-Mayor Greg Goodnight held a press conference to officially announce the project, the current city administration and other involved parties have been mum. Earlier this month, the Greater Kokomo Economic Development Alliance released a press release saying the project was “progressing” and only provided details that the hotel will be a Hilton Garden Inn with an estimated 123 rooms.
Both when the development agreement is signed and made public and when presentations are made at the BZA and plan commission meetings, the project’s details and designs will become clearer.
The need for a downtown hotel and conference center is more now than it was four years ago after the loss of the Kokomo Event & Conference Center as a large-scale event center.
The process to bring a downtown hotel and conference center project to Kokomo has been a long one.
Specifically, then-Alliance President and CEO Charlie Sparks told the Tribune in 2018 that a Downtown Master Plan developed “a few years ago” indicated such a development would bring additional income and wealth into the local community.
That was followed by an analysis in 2014 by a Carmel-based consultant that targeted the location between Main and Union streets as a potential site for a downtown hotel and conference center.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
