A local businessman’s preliminary proposal to build an 80-bedroom hotel and conference center across from the Town and Country Plaza in the Village Edge South area on Route 20 has begun winding its way through the village planning process, and the first public hearing on the project — a subdivision request to carve out six acres of the VES area for the hotel — has been scheduled by the village planning board for 7:30 p.m. Monday, May 12.
The hotel project is being proposed by Dan Kuper, owner of The Lincklaen House, who has been working on the idea for nearly five years.
“We are missing out on many events in Madison County because we don’t have a facility big enough to do conferences and special events,” Kuper said.
Kuper’s plan — officially under the name of his company Cazenovia Hospitality LLC — is to build a national chain hotel that will have 80 rooms and a conference facility for 300 people. The conference facility will be one floor and the hotel will be four floors. There will be no restaurant in the hotel. The building material is to be stone and siding with a shingle roof. The number of parking spots has yet to be determined.
The hotel would be located in the Village Edge South area contiguous to the CAVAC property but located slightly more to the south, directly across Route 20 from McDonald’s.
“I do not feel this will affect the inns in town but it will keep the people from staying in Carrier Circle and near the casino that have business in the area,” Kuper said. “There are different travelers — ones that like historic inns, of which Cazenovia has three of the best around — and the people that like to stay in chain hotels with elevators and swimming pools.”
While the project still has a long way to go as it moves through the village planning approval process, Kuper said he hopes to break ground in the fall and open in late spring 2015.
Kuper already has given informal overviews of his proposal to the village Planning Board and the village Historic Preservation/Architectural Advisory Review Committee, and last week presented his preliminary plan to the planning board at its regular monthly meeting.
“I think this project has made a lot of progress in the right direction in the last couple of weeks,” Planning Board Chair Rich Huftalen said during the planning board’s April 14 meeting.
Huftalen said Kuper has been designing his hotel based on the new VES design guidelines (approved by the village board in February), and has put together renderings depicting some modifications from his original plan based on suggestions from Don Ferlow.
Kuper and his architect will next present the plan to the HPC at its next regular meeting at 7 p.m. Monday, April 28, in the village municipal building to receive the committee’s input on the hotel architecture with the goal of refining a design that will satisfy public aesthetics while also meeting Kuper’s business needs. He will appear before the planning board again during its May 12 regular meeting for a required public hearing for a subdivision and further discussion of his plan.
“The HPC really, really wants to see this be successful because this could be great not just for Dan but for the community. We need something like this, and we want it to be something we can all look at and be proud of,” said HPC Chair Ted Bartlett. “But it is just at the very beginning stages.”
“The village is very excited about this project; it will be an incredible catalyst for economic development in the community,” said Mayor Kurt Wheeler. “I’m confident the process will produce an outcome that Dan and the entire community can be proud of.”
Plans and paperwork concerning the proposed hotel are available for public review in the planning board records in the Cazenovia Village Municipal Building.
Jason Emerson is editor of the Cazenovia Republican. He can be reached at [email protected].
