Jan. 18–TUPELO — A Comfort Suites hotel will open later this year, but not at its former site near the North Gloster and North Green street intersection, where it was heavily damaged by the April 2014 tornado and later demolished.

The new location for Comfort Suites will be on Carter Cove, behind Lowe's in the Tupelo Commons Development.

The 75-room all-suites hotel will be built adjacent to the Hampton Inn & Suites, which was built in 2011.

The Comfort Suites is being built by Vee Patel, who has owned the Baymont Inn and Suites in Tupelo for 11 years.

"I've always been looking to do another hotel," he said. Patel and his business partners wanted to be in the Barnes Crossing area and liked the parcel in Tupelo Commons.

Construction should be finished in the next 12 months, but Patel said he would like to open the hotel before the end of the year.

That, of course, depends on the weather and the contractors.

The hotel will be four stories tall and include an indoor pool, a fitness room and a two-story lobby. An 1,800-square-foot conference room also will be included.

Patel thinks the hotel will do well, having seen other hotels in the Barnes Crossing area, including the Hampton Inn & Suites (88 rooms), Best Western Plus (80 rooms) and Fairfield Inn & Suites (87 rooms). The last two hotels also opened in 2011.

When completed, the Comfort Suites will be the newest addition to the city's inventory of some 1,500 hotel rooms. The last hotels to open in the All-America City were the Candlewood Suites (79 rooms) and the Holiday Inn and Suites (121 rooms) in 2013.

The former Comfort Suites, a four-story, 80-room property, was built in 2008. That property has remained vacant since its demolition. Fusion Hospitality, which owns the site, announced in 2015 that it would build a 108-room Home2 Suites. It's unclear if those plans remain, as representatives with the company could not be reached for comment.