Commissioners set to sign closing documents for My Place Hotel development
By Chris Fortune
Development of a hotel near the Shoppes at North Village will clear another hurdle next week.
Buchanan County Commissioners will sign closing documents for a plot of land off North Village Drive, just north of Jack Horner’s Machinery-Contractors, on Monday.
The signing will pave the way for Rimrock Development, a Florida-based real estate developer, to begin construction on a My Place Hotel.
A closing date was originally scheduled for Jan. 4, but the developers exercised their last 30-day extension.
“They’re at the end of their extensions,” Presiding Commissioner Scott Nelson said. “And that extension ends on the fifth. So that’s Monday. And our general counsel for the commission, Josh Bachman, has been in constant communication with their group over there.”
Rimrock is finalizing the wording on the title and description of the property. After conversations with Bachman, Nelson said he understood the development phase could begin soon.
“For all practical purposes, it’s shovel-ready,” he said. “And they thought, if I remember correctly, they were thinking maybe a year, year and a half, until that thing’s up and running.”
Nelson said it doesn’t do the developers any good to sit on the property since it would cause them to lose money.
“We think this is very good faith, and they’ve been doing their work,” he said. “And especially if you’re close, I mean, then you ought to do something. I mean, it can’t just sit there and be idle. So, yeah, we’re kind of excited about that.”
A Hilton-affiliated hotel is further along in its construction behind the YMCA. The concrete foundation has been established, and construction supplies are scattered throughout the work site. The expectation is that both hotels will be running in the next year and a half.
Buchanan County still owns around 40 acres of land, and the commissioners want to be intentional about who they sell the property to.
“We try to be purposeful,” he said. “If we have land available, who are we selling it to, what’s their purpose? We have to keep in the back of our mind what is good for our community.”
