Cottonwood OKs Land Sale for Hotel

By Jon Hecht for JournalAZ.com
The Cottonwood City Council unanimously voted in favor of selling a 3.74- acre parcel of land at 535 S. Sixth Street, to Sunridge Properties Inc., a management company that has 17 hotels spread across Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah, for a price of $383,328.
The sale is equal to $4/SF, based on a January 2018 appraisal.
Sunridge requested to purchase the property with a plan to build a Springhill Suites by Marriott hotel at the location, with a plan for 85 beds. Sunridge expects to spend $11M to construct the new hotel.
“Our thinking is that Cottonwood is a nice community,” Springfield CEO Paul Welker told the council at a recent meeting. “We feel like it would attract a lot of people who would not want to pay $3-, $4-, $500 sometimes when rates get crazy in Sedona. If they see something at a third of that, I think a lot of those people will elect to go 15 miles to Cottonwood and stay here, and I think that will benefit your community.”
“I think it will benefit your stores, your restaurants, your gas stations, and that I think will be an added benefit to the community.”
Springfield representatives told the council it estimated its annual gross revenues from the hotel at $3M once it got up and running, which would mean $210K yearly in additional sales tax and bed taxes, in addition to an estimated $185K in water and wastewater utility fees.
Welker made the case that with Marriott claiming to have over 100 million rewards members world- wide, having a Marriott hotel in town will attract visitors to Cottonwood, rather than other nearby towns.
The land that Sunridge plans to buy does not make up the entirety of the parcel owned by the city. Town Manager Ron Corbin suggested at the meeting that the remaining portion owned by Cottonwood is large enough for the city to later sell to another buyer in order to construct a restaurant with the requisite parking.
Read more at JournalAZ.com.