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By Andrew Barksdale, The Fayetteville Observer, N.C.McClatchy-Tribune Regional News Sept. 03--Plans for an Embassy Suites hotel and convention center near Fayetteville's retail sector are back on with
the help of public incentives. The city of Fayetteville has tentatively agreed to offer the developer incentives that include waiving half the building permit fees and refunding about half the property taxes that will be paid on the project in the first five years. The developer, Five Points Hospitality of Fayetteville, wants to build the hotel on Lake Valley Drive -- the four-lane road that connects Yadkin Road with Cross Creek Mall. The land on either side of Lake Valley Drive, which runs past Toys R Us, is undeveloped. The City Council has scheduled a public hearing for Sept. 13 before voting on the incentives package. State law requires the public hearing. Last fall, the developers approached the city about tapping into the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to help build the project through revenue bonds. Kristoff Bauer, an assistant city manager, said the developer didn't qualify, so Five Points will rely on its own private financing to build the hotel and convention center. "The scope of this project has not changed," Bauer said. "We are still talking about a $28 million project." According to the company's website, the Embassy Suites would have 167 rooms and an 18,000-square-foot conference center that would meet security standards required by the federal government. Five Points owns Hilton Garden Inn on Sycamore Dairy Road. Last week, the City Council met with Doug Peters, president of the Fayetteville-Cumberland County Chamber of Commerce, in a closed session to review the incentives offer. The city also has agreed to build a bus stop shelter and loan the developer up to $500,000 from a $1 million revolving fund set up in 2007 to restore neighborhood dams. No money has ever been used from the fund. In this case, Bauer said, the money would be used to essentially relocate a patch of wetlands on the site to avoid potential flooding problems in the future. Information on the total value of the incentives package was not available Thursday. Staff writer Andrew Barksdale can be reached at
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or 486-3565. Tweet ----- To see more of The Fayetteville Observer, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.fayettevillenc.com/. Copyright (c) 2010, The Fayetteville Observer, N.C. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For more information about the content services offered by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services (MCT), visit www.mctinfoservices.com, e-mail
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