May 27–AMESBURY — State deputy secretary of Housing and Economic Development Carolyn Kirk joined city and state officials yesterday for a ceremonial groundbreaking of a new $10.5 million hotel at the entryway of the Golden Triangle.
“Do not underestimate the accomplishment you have made today in this groundbreaking ceremony,” Kirk said. “I have no doubt that there are more good things to come and we stand ready to serve the city of Amesbury.”
Located at 284 Elm St., the future 54,000-square-foot Hampton Inn is the first project to utilize Gray’s Tax Increment Financing (TIF) program designed to attract new businesses to the city by temporarily lowering their property tax bills.
Financed by Archgrove Hospitality which owns eight other Hampton Inn and Holiday Inn Express locations in New Hampshire and Maine, the 92-room hotel will abut the Carriagetown Marketplace shopping center and feature a gym and indoor pool, as well as a breakfast room and meeting space.
“The hotel project perfectly aligns with my goal of expanding the commercial and industrial base, thereby reducing the tax burden on Amesbury residents,” Gray said. “There is a lot more to it, but this is an important first step.”
The TIF grants a tax break in exchange for development. Under the TIF guidelines, the city will collect $47,000 in annual property taxes from Archgrove for the first five years of the program, then approximately $106,000 annually over the next five years. At the conclusion of the TIF schedule, the $7.5 million property would bring in an estimated $157,000 in annual property tax revenue to the city.
Originally owned by Gertrude Sears, the 3.82-acre hotel site also represents the first large-scale development within the so-called Golden Triangle, land that lies at the intersections of Route 110, Interstate 95 and Interstate 495; it was rezoned as a fashion retail district to allow further expansion last year.
According to a written statement from Archgrove Hospitality president Shailesh Patel, the TIF program was instrumental in bringing his company back to Amesbury after it decided not to pursue the hotel’s development due to the cost of required site improvements in the past.
“We are extremely pleased that they have come back,” Gray said. “They were here in 2010 and came very close to doing a deal but couldn’t get around some issues that made the site prohibitively expensive to develop and they headed back out. Our TIF put them over the top. Due to the financing project that we put into place, it allowed them to make this project viable.”
Gray also praised the work of the city’s director of Community and Economic Development, Bill Scott, who he said was instrumental in the process of bringing Archgrove back to the table last year.
“Bill was the force behind putting this whole TIF program together within City Hall,” Gray said. “I couldn’t be more pleased with Bill’s efforts to help me rally the support of the community.”
A vocal supporter of the TIF program, Amesbury Chamber of Commerce executive director Melissa Cerasuolo was also on hand yesterday to welcome the new hotel.
Construction is projected to be completed next summer when the city will serve as the finish line for the Fireball Run in September. Cerasuolo said that she estimates the race will draw roughly 250 overnight visitors from Universal Studios between drivers and media.
“The hotel is coming at the perfect time,” Cerasuolo said. “We look forward to not only hosting the teams but their families as well and showing them how great our community is.”
With the 105-room Fairfield Inn located just across Route 110 from the incoming hotel, both Gray and Cerasuolo said they feel the city is big enough to embrace two hotels of comparable size.
“The folks at Archgrove know a lot more about the demographic of the area than I do,” Gray said. “These guys have eight hotels in this part of the country, many of them not too far north of here, and they know pretty well what the market is, and their financial backers do as well.”
Writing that the city is “a tightly-knit community with a lot of passion,” Patel went on to state that Amesbury’s culture alone is enough to justify his company’s investment.
“There were other factors as well,” Patel wrote. “The site provides an excellent location within the Golden Triangle, at the intersection of two major interstates. In addition, we believe that there is a lot of potential from a market perspective. The mayor and the city as a whole have shown tremendous support for this project, and we believe the market will support our business model. We are excited to move forward as a part of Amesbury’s business community.”
