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WILKES-BARRE — The owner of the former Hotel Sterling site has a date Wednesday with the city’s Zoning Hearing Board about a new hotel planned for the property.
H & N Investments LLC has several requests regarding parking and site plans pending before the board, which meets at 4:30 p.m. at the Luzerne County Courthouse in the first-floor council room.
George Albert, consulting engineer to the project, said the venue was changed because the city council chambers in Wilkes-Barre City Hall where the board regularly meets is too small for the expected crowd.
The project, estimated to cost $28 million, involves construction of a 107-room hotel for the property located at the intersection of West Market and North River streets. One of the requests is to waive the front-yard setback along West Market Street to five feet from the required 10 feet for the hotel. The other requests include permission for a parking lot to accommodate 90 to 92 vehicles and waivers of a setback altogether and fencing for certain areas of the lot.
If all goes according to plan, ground would be broken later this year, Albert said Monday. But that depends on the availability of funding from the state, he said.
“We have a good chunk of our own,” Albert said. The developer is counting on $15 million in Redevelopment Assistance Capital Program funding contained in the state’s 2017-2018 capital budget. Whether the project receives a grant from the program funded by state revenues and bonds is up to the governor. It does have the benefit of a Keystone Opportunity Zone designation, however, that provides tax relief through 2024.
The project has changed since it was presented in early 2018 when the city selected the proposal by Gateway Center Associates headed by Hysni “Sam” Syla, a Kosovo native who developed several smaller local projects. Syla’s H & N Investments LLC later purchased the city-owned property located at a gateway from the West Side for $600,000.
“We have a new design,” Albert said, adding Scranton-based Hemmler & Camayd Architects are working with the developer.
The hotel would be the second proposed for the downtown and, like the other one, years in the making.
A few blocks away Sphere International LLC began demolition earlier this month of the former Frank Clark Jeweler building on South Main Street for a five-story, 102-room Avid Hotel. That project, which also has changed, was first proposed in October 2015.
The Gateway Center Associates project would fill a void left with the unsuccessful attempt by the nonprofit CityVest to develop the Hotel Sterling and surrounding parcels of land. The city condemned the designated landmark, demolished it in 2013 and eventually took possession of the property.
The long vacant Sterling Annex on North River Street, next to the site, is being renovated into luxury apartments by a separate developer.
Reach Jerry Lynott at 570-991-6120 or on Twitter @TLJerryLynott.