Excise tax moves Holiday Inn plan forward in Sylvania Township
Posted By: The Toledo Blade on November 7, 2022. For more information, please click here to read the source article.
Sylvania Township Trustees are set to take a big step toward the construction of a long-planned hotel near I-475 and West Central Avenue.
At its meeting Nov. 15, the board is scheduled to vote on a planned 3 percent excise lodging tax, which will go into effect after the building’s construction.
The hotel, planned to be a Holiday Inn Express, is slated to be built at 3128 Plainview Dr. That’s just off the I-475 ramp onto Central Avenue on 1.8 acres of property owned by Hotel Central LLC since 2019.
Hotel Central LLC lists its mailing address at Sylvania-based developer, Millstream Development Co.
The hotel will be the first for the township and follows the Wingate by Wyndham Hotel in downtown Sylvania at 5480 S. Main St., which opened in the early 2000s. Plans shared earlier this year called for the Holiday Inn Express to have more than 75 rooms and an indoor pool.
The Sylvania area had documented struggles getting a hotel built in their jurisdiction in the 1990s as developers sought property with more direct highway access, an attractive feature of the Holiday Inn property.
“Amongst comparable Ohio townships, those that do have a hotel or motel that would pay the tax, have some sort of hotel tax revenue,” township administrator Oliver Turner said Monday, noting that the city of Sylvania collects a similar tax on the Wingate. “It is common across Ohio.”
In June, the township trustees approved a zoning request to allow the prospective hotel to be 60 feet tall. A similar request was approved in 2019 but expired after two years, as the hotel industry suffered during the coronavirus pandemic.
John Jennewine, township trustee, said the project is now in the developer’s hands.
“The township is under the impression that the project is still moving ahead,” Mr. Jennewine said. “I believe it has all been approved and everything is good on our end.”
Mr. Jennewine noted that factors such as interest rates and financing means that building projects like this can be up in the air for long periods of time.
A vote on the issue on Oct. 18 was postponed as the Toledo Regional Chamber of Commerce reached out to the township trustees and asked to be involved or given the opportunity to review the proposal.
The township anticipates being given the green light to go ahead with the vote. Chamber of Commerce officials described this review as something they regularly go through, as a simple process of gathering information.
The excise tax money would go into the Sylvania Township general fund. An attempt to reach Millstream Development was unsuccessful Monday.
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