Public hearing set for proposed development agreement for Mason City downtown hotel
MASON CITY — The City Council in Mason City last night set the date for a public hearing on a proposed development agreement for the downtown hotel that’s part of the River City Renaissance Project.
The agreement would be with ES 2024 Mason City Hotel Associates LLC, which is part of Kinseth Hospitality Companies. The agreement would obligate the developer to purchase the hotel site from the city for $50,000 to build a four-story, 80-room hotel with an indoor pool and connection to Music Man Square via the Delaware Avenue Skywalk. The developer pledges to invest at least $15 million in the project and complete it by December 31st of next year.
When asked by a councilman on why Kinseth Hospitality wasn’t wanting to be a part of the project when the hotel was originally proposed, City Administrator Aaron Burnett said the improvements downtown in the last few years made the hotel project more attractive. “We show them the work on the Riverwalk. We show them the arena. We show them the pavilion. The restaurants, the environment they are building a hotel into, it shows as a place, and I’ll use their words, a place where they make money. If you put a hotel in an environment like that where someone has those amenities around them and a place where they want to be, they see an environment that they want to invest into. They did not see that I think when they first looked at this project.”
Burnett says the vision of the hotel was always sound, it’s just getting through the execution and getting the final product. “I think the vision of the River City Renaissance will be completed, albeit with a long time frame, but seeing a group like that come in and show interest, it would have been fantastic to start right there, but we had some work to do, and we got that work done.”
For making the investment of the hotel, the city would provide an economic development loan of $1 million, which would be repaid over ten years at 3.25% interest. In addition, the city will provide an economic development grant of $1.75 million within 30 days after the hotel receives a certificate of occupancy. The city will also make an annual tax increment financing payment to the developer for ten years with the maximum rebate over the ten-year period is $1.9 million.
The public hearing is scheduled for the council’s March 18th meeting.
