Recordpub.com - Kent redevelopment talks continue No formal agreement yet for downtown hotel, conference center

By Matt Fredmonsky

Record-Courier staff writer

Kent city and Kent State University officials continue talks with private developers on a hotel and conference center and estimated $40 million to $55 million downtown redevelopment project.

Dan Smith, Kent’s economic development director, said city and university leaders meet regularly with the private development firms interested in working downtown, but the discussions have not risen to the point of signing either a development agreement or a memorandum of understanding.

Smith said an agreement to work together in Kent has been signed by the private developers involved, which includes: Fairmount Properties of Cleveland; Pizzuti Companies, the Columbus-based hotel firm headed by Kent native Ronald Pizzuti; Omni Hospitality, a Solon-based hotel developer; and Street-Works Development Group, a planning firm with offices in New York and Virginia.

“They’ve all signed an agreement to work together,” Smith said.

Both the city and KSU own property in the block bordered by Haymaker Parkway, South Water, South DePeyster and Erie streets, where Fairmount Properties has planned its mixed-use development with retail, residential and restaurant spaces.

Kent City Council was set to consider its own agreement with Fairmount on the project in December, but Kent City Manager Dave Ruller said the meeting was canceled because the draft agreement with Fairmount had not been finalized.

University leaders are optimistic both the hotel and conference center and mixed-use redevelopment will come to fruition, as university officials have been asked to formalize the institution’s role in the project by becoming a signatory to a future development agreement.

KSU President Lester Lefton said university officials are working closely with city leaders and the private developers to move the hotel and conference center forward.

“There are schematics, there are sketches, there are ideas,” Lefton said. “The city is purchasing property. We are purchasing property. We’re far along, but there is not a deal yet to do it. But we’re close.”

The city recently began to develop new agreement terms as the university better defined its level of participation.

But all the project elements have to line up for progress to take place, Smith said.

“You have to have financing that works,” he said. “You have to have busineses that can operate at that level, and then you have to have the public and private support.”

Smith said the collapse of the financial markets in October, and the resulting inability to obtain financing for real estate development, created a significant challenge for the project.

“We’re investigating all avenues of financing the project,” Smith said. “I think it’s still extremely likely. At what level the final project comes in at, I’m not sure. But the fact that we have ownership in the area ... without question a project is going to happen on that site.”

Record-Courier staff writer Colin McEwen contributed to this story.

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Dec. 9, 2008

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