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LEWISTON — Developers will receive a $7 million guaranteed loan to help build a 93-room Hampton Inn on Lincoln Street.

The $7,023,258 USDA Rural Development Business and Industry Guaranteed Loan to Lincoln Street Hoteliers LLC will be in partnership with Machias Savings Bank. 

The Hampton Inn at 15 Lincoln St., just south of Yvon’s Supersonic Car Wash, will create 17 full-time-equivalent jobs paying an average wage of twice the federal minimum, according to a news release from Rural Development in Bangor.

The federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

The $12.3 million facility is expected to contribute to the city’s continuing downtown redevelopment efforts. It would be marketed as a three-star hotel, slightly less expensive than Auburn’s Hilton Garden Inn Riverwatch hotel on the other side of the Androscoggin River.

The proposal calls for a four-story hotel built at 15 and 29 Lincoln St., the former sites of the R.I. Mitchell and the Vincent Fruits buildings. The building’s face would be built right up to Lincoln Street, with parking and support between the street and the river. The bulk of the rooms would face north, looking at the Great Falls.

Most of the 96 parking spaces would be built on-site or on a city lot between the hotel and the Androscoggin River.

The Hilton Garden Inn hotel brand and the Hampton Inn brand are chains owned and marketed by Hilton Worldwide.

The purpose of USDA Rural Development’s Business & Industry Guaranteed Loan Program is to improve, develop or finance business, industry and employment and improve the economic and environmental climate in rural communities.

USDA Rural Development has invested a total of $402.5 million in Maine communities in the last fiscal year. For more information on rural programs, visit a local USDA Rural Development office or www.rurdev.usda.gov/me.

Information from the Bangor Daily News was used in this report.

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