LEWISTON — A group of Maine investors is looking into the feasibility of building a 100-room hotel near the corner of Lincoln and Main streets.
City councilors emerged from an executive session at the end of Tuesday’s meeting and voted 5-0 to give Parallax Partners Inc. an option to buy the lots at 15 and 29 Lincoln Street, the former sites of the R.I Mitchell building and the Vincent Fruits building. Combined, the two lots amount to about 1.03 acres.
Business Development Officer Lincoln Jeffers said developers would pay the city $7,500 for an option to buy the land.
“This was necessary to give them control of the site, so they can begin evaluating the feasibility of a hotel on that site,” Jeffers said. “They needed site control to do that, so we’ll be moving forward on a joint development agreement now.”
The company’s feasibility study will look at market demand in the area, proposed occupancy levels and room rates the hotel would expect. Jeffers said the company has been working with a hotel chain but he was not at liberty to say which one.
“That needs to come from them,” he said.
The developers have to create a financing plan and begin negotiating a joint development agreement with the city.
Jeffers said the option agreement comes at the end of more than a year’s worth of negotiations.
“There were discussions, on and off, and kind of circling to figure out how we should package it,” Jeffers said.
He said the plan is to provide parking for the project at the new Lincoln Street parking garage across the street, with more parking on the open lot between Lincoln Street and the Androscoggin River.
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