Nov. 25–When it came time to strike the first blow against the building, Faisal Merani couldn’t resist climbing behind the controls of the excavator himself.

The local hotelier had been waiting years for a chance to start demolition at the old Fallside Motel, a property located at the corner of Fourth Street and Buffalo Avenue that has been dormant for several years.

On Monday, he pushed the lever dropping the excavator’s bucket down, slamming it into an old section of the building that will be cleared away as part of his family’s latest Niagara Falls venture — the development of a $27 million DoubleTree by Hilton.

The new hotel will be the third owned by the Merani family in the city. Once completed, the DoubleTree by Hilton will offer a total of 194 rooms, 16,000 square feet of banquet space, a 550-person ballroom, indoor pool, gym, outdoor patio facing the Niagara River and a family friendly restaurant. Once opened, the hotel it is expected that the hotel will offer 55 new jobs.

“We’ve very happy to be here in Niagara Falls and to be a small part of what’s been a lot of progress in the last couple of years,” Merani said during a press conference before the official start of the demolition portion of the project.

Faisal and his father, Ashak, have increased the family’s presence in the Falls in recent years. The Meranis own and operate the Four Points by Sheraton on Buffalo Avenue near the Grand Island bridge in LaSalle as well as the Holiday Inn on Rainbow Boulevard, a property that recently underwent a multi-million dollar renovation.

The Meranis have eyed the redevelopment of the old Fallside property since 2009. On Monday, Faisal Merani admitted that the project took a little longer to bring to fruition than originally expected, but said he’s confident the end result will the worth the wait for the community and visitors alike.

Merani Hotel Group will receive a $2 million convertible loan from Empire State Development’s Upstate Regional Blueprint Fund and a $750,000 capital grant from USA Niagara Development Corp. as part of the redevelopment project.

Plans call for the entire two-story section at the front of the current building to be removed and replaced, with the remaining four-story section of the structure to be renovated. The new hotel will also feature a nine-story tower overlooking the Niagara River.

“We’re hoping to really bring back the hotel to what it was in its heyday, with a little modern twist on everything,” Faisal Merani said.

Demolition started just two weeks after local officials broke ground on another highly anticipated project in the same area. Slated for completion by May 2016, the DoubleTree by Hilton is expected to offer an up-close view of the results the ongoing $18 million reconfiguration of the southern section of the Robert Moses Parkway.

Faisal Merani said he’s excited about the prospect of the new-look parkway section, which officials say will offer a new, more-pedestrian-friendly “Riverway” along the upper Niagara River directly behind the old Fallside property. The Riverway project, which will also include a trail network, is expected to be completed around the same time as the hotel in the spring of 2016, which Faisal Merani views as a plus.

“We’re very excited that it’s happening at the same time now,” he said.

State and local officials said the DoubleTree project adds to what is now more than $250 million worth of either planned or ongoing construction in the downtown area, with much of the work devoted to adding new hotel space.

“The project represents another significant private investment along the upper Niagara River that will be a catalyst for the Buffalo Avenue neighborhood,” said USA Niagara Development Corp. President Christopher Schoepflin. “The location for this major redevelopment will take full advantage of the Riverway project with views and access to the Niagara Falls waterfront.”

In total, officials from the state-run USA Niagara Development Corp. say there are about 890 new hotels rooms in the pipeline, along with 100,000 square feet of entertainment and roughly 50,000 square feet of retail and food and beverage space. The list of projects includes Uniland’s proposed “Wonderfalls” project at the former Rainbow Centre Mall building and Buffalo developer Mark Hamister’s 128-room, mixed use hotel building at 310 Rainbow Boulevard.

The projects respond to a 2011 study commissioned by the state in which the consulting firm, HVS Consulting and Valuation Services, determined that Niagara Falls, N.Y. lacked a sufficient number of high-end hotel rooms as compared to its counterpart in Niagara Falls, Ont. The study found that out of the roughly 3,000 hotel rooms available on the U.S. side of the Falls, roughly 66 percent fell into the economy lodging or independent properties categories. By comparison, there are about 16,000 total hotel rooms on the Canadian side.