Onondaga County has unveiled a couple of plans to get more hotel rooms in Syracuse. The first idea is to find someone to build a 200-room convention center hotel on a county-owned parking lot one block away from the Oncenter. The second is to develop a fund to encourage the building of other hotels. County Executive Ryan McMahon says with Micron and other businesses moving in, the economic future is bright.
“We also know that the one area where we are behind the ball and everyone agrees on is the fact that we do not have enough hotel inventory to meet the economic opportunities that are here in the community today.”
McMahon says the county will soon put out a 60-day request for proposals to hopefully get the first project going at a parking lot on Harrison street next to the Everson Museum of Art.
McMahon says the community is short thousands of hotel rooms, so it’s important to jump start other projects with a $4 million hotel initiative funded from the room occupancy tax surplus. He says the $50,000 to $750,000 grants should be enough to overcome some current obstacles.
“I’m not worried about people wanting to build hotels in 2028 and 2029," McMahon said. "They’re going to do it and they’re going to make a lot of money, and hopefully interest rates will be a lot better. But right now you have interest rates the highest they’ve been in 40 years and you have inflation that’s been well over three percent year to year…so you have to incentivize that.”
McMahon adds that the lack of rooms has cost Syracuse everything from hosting an NCAA Regional Tournament to major conventions. The county executive’s proposals will soon be introduced to the legislature’s planning and economic development committee, chaired by David Knapp. He says the grants should address the short-term need.
“That money is intended to be put back in to generate more room nights and more economic activity," Knapp said. "So I think there's a good use for that money, and hopefully it will be really successful and we'll think about doing a round two.”
Meanwhile, Knapp says he’s eager to see what the future holds for the convention center parking lot, where plans for a hotel were scrapped more than a decade ago. He agrees with McMahon that the prime property should include more than a hotel, and complement the re-development of the adjacent neighborhood.
