Another day, another multimillion dollar hotel.

A few weeks after Auburn announced its major lodging development, Wednesday was Lewiston’s turn, with the revelation of a North Carolina developer having contracted to build an upscale hotel on 1.16 acres of city property overlooking the Great Falls.

For an area quiet of major hotel developments until the Hilton Garden Inn in Auburn opened, two major announcements in the short span of weeks is an eyebrow raiser. A cynic would likely say, “Great news. So how long will it take for them to go out of business?”

That was the common refrain about the Hilton Garden Inn, and it built more rooms, retorts Chip Morrison, the president of the Androscoggin County Chamber of Commerce. Morrison remembers the intrinsic negativity when people thought it ludicrous to open an upscale hotel in downtown Auburn.

Four years later, the Hilton’s subsequent success is a nose-thumbing toward its critics.

Lodging statistics about Lewiston-Auburn, though, are middling. Sales tax revenue only ticked up 0.1 percent from 2005 to 2006, according to the Maine State Planning Office, after several years of steady growth.

Overall lodging tax revenue in L-A has grown 8.6 percent since 2002, a large portion of which could be attributed to the opening of the Hilton Garden Inn in 2003.

It’s a lofty number, however, compared to other urban areas in Maine, as Portland (3.5 percent), Augusta (1.8 percent) and Bangor (6.5 percent) all posted lesser gains during the same five-year period.

It makes us think these hoteliers know something some in L-A might not believe: that economic opportunity is expanding, and the market has made construction in the Twin Cities a wise investment.

And worth vying for. A key facet of these announcements is the emergence of competition between two developers striving to provide the market with their services.

Regardless of one’s opinion of the marketplace, L-A ought to remember it’s quite nice to be fought over.

Morrison thinks this situation is occurring because the image of L-A from outside the community is changing. He’s probably right, because the cities’ most vocal pessimists, oftentimes, live within its borders.

Perhaps these developments tell those accustomed to this mind-set that it’s time to change.