Hotel projects under way at Sparks Marina

Olympia Companies, in a joint venture with Tharaldson Hospitality Management, broke ground on two long-awaited hotel projects at the Sparks Marina.

The 102-room Hampton Inn & Suites By Hilton and the 104-room The Residence Inn by Marriott are expected to open by spring 2018.

Olympia, a commercial, residential and retail development firm headquartered in Las Vegas, acquired the 13.5-acre undeveloped land in 2007 with plans to build hotel and gaming entities. But as luck would have it, the Great Recession soon followed, and plans were shelved.

However, the recent resurgent northern Nevada economy reopened the door for the developers. DeCoury Graham, chief marketing and development officer for Olympia, explained the company had been keeping close tabs on the local economy, particularly from another one of its affiliated hotel properties, Courtyard Carson City.

“We monitored the region for quite some time and now see it as a stabilized market,” Graham said in a phone interview with NNBW. “The market conditions are all there for us to proceed.”

The hotel venture is the first phase of a multi-stage project that also includes the 70,000-square-foot Legends Bay Casino.

Originally, the hotels and casino were packaged as a single construction project, but after some consideration, it made more sense to build them separately. Olympia projects a 2018 groundbreaking for the casino property.

“The casino project is more complicated to build with some unique amenities while the hotels have much more standard design elements,” Graham said.

Once completed, The Hampton Inn & Suites will provide amenities such as complimentary breakfast, high-speed Internet, a 24-hour business center, an indoor pool and fitness facilities.

The Residence Inn offers studio, one bedroom, or two bedroom suites. In-room amenities include kitchens outfitted with residential sized stainless steel appliances, grocery delivery service, 24-hour markets as well as complimentary breakfasts.

Rafael Construction Inc., a full-service general contractor based in Las Vegas, will oversee the Hampton Inn & Suites project while DC Building Group also of Las Vegas will handle the Residence Inn development. The combined construction cost of the hotels is estimated at $40 million.

Las Vegas-based DesignCell Architecture designed both hotels.

Tharaldson, headquartered in Decatur, Ill., will manage day-to-day operations of both hotels once they are open for business. It currently manages 34 hotels in 14 states, with eight other projects slated to open this year.

Graham anticipates the construction of the hotels or the forthcoming casino will have minimal, if any, disruption to the adjacent Outlets at Sparks shopping center or nearby residential areas.

Once completed, Graham also predicts the new properties will enhance business at the shopping mecca and vice versa.

“We know the developers of the mall (RED Development LLC) very well, and have been coordinating this project with them for some time,” Graham said. “SCHEELS, for one, gets a lot of consumers from other regions and this may give them more of an incentive to stay for a longer period of time.”