A Holiday Inn & Suites being built on the site of the former Truman Hotel in Jefferson City will open by the end of the year.
Ada Hatzios, a spokeswoman for Holiday Inn parent company InterContinental Hotels Group, told the News Tribune the 131-room hotel at 1590 Jefferson St. will open by the end of the fourth quarter of 2018.
Vivek Puri, executive vice president and general counsel of hotel owner Puri Group Enterprises, declined to specify when the hotel may open.
The Jefferson City Council and Jefferson City Housing Authority approved a 10-year property tax abatement on the property in 2017 after PGE agreed to redevelop an area deemed blighted. A report prepared for the Jefferson City Council in February 2017 outlined the two-step process in which the project would unfold.
The first phase of construction began in September 2017, when work commenced on the Holiday Inn & Suites. The new hotel will have conference rooms and guest amenities worth at least $8 million, according to building permits filed with Jefferson City last year.
Eventually a Cheerleader Pub & Grill, a chain restaurant owned by PGE, will be built on the site, according to an application for the project filed in early 2017. Later, a 20,000-square-foot conference center will be built between the Holiday Inn & Suites and a second unnamed hotel on the site.
During the second phase, two final Truman Hotel buildings on an adjoining parcel at 1510 Jefferson St. will be demolished and the second hotel will be built, according to the plan from February 2017. Both phases will reconfigure parking lots on the site, the plan from 2017 said.
All together, the project is expected to cost about $56 million.
Puri declined to comment when asked if PGE still plans to demolish the remaining Truman Hotel buildings. Jefferson City Building Official Larry Burkhardt said, to his knowledge, PGE still plans to demolish the remaining Truman Hotel buildings, but his office has not received any applications for demolition permits.
“I have not received anything officially, as of today,” Burkhardt said.
Burkhardt also said the second hotel is still unnamed.
PGE, which also owns the 151-room DoubleTree by Hilton in downtown Jefferson City and several other Mid-Missouri hotels, initially applied in early 2016 to build a Courtyard by Marriott hotel and a Holiday Inn & Suites using tax increment financing to offset some of the project’s cost. The TIF would have allowed the group to reimburse up to $8.89 million in project costs primarily through property tax generated on the property during 25 years. That public funding assistance failed to win approval from the Jefferson City Council and TIF Commission.