Feasibility study for hotel underway in Rochester

Thursday, August 15, 2024 at 6:40 AM

By Wes Dehne

More than 20 businesses in Fulton County are being surveyed on hotel accommodations.

With Rochester's south end poised for growth, including plans for a new business park, Fulton Economic Development Corp. (FEDCO) is again studying the feasibility of bringing a hotel to the area.

Working with hotel consultants of Core Distinction Group, FEDCO is hoping to determine whether a new hotel could be supported and, if so, where should it be located, how large should it be and what kind of amenities should be included.

To gauge not only interest, but also the amount of visitors a new hotel could attract, a survey has been distributed to roughly 25 area businesses.

"With everything that's going on, we need to talk about the possibility of a hotel and get a feel for what the future traffic could be," FEDCO Executive Director Michael Ladd said.

He added that determining a location for a new hotel is not as important at this point as finding out if the county's top-tier employers will utilize it and how many people they have coming in to visit.

"We didn't just survey Rochester," Ladd said. "We've got Fulton, Kewanna and Akron involved in this too."

"All this is going to do is help us, and we need all the information we can get," he added, encouraging those who received the survey to fill it out as soon as possible.

Ladd noted that a previous study was conducted in 2020, however, it's findings were quickly outdated due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

"Now that we're pretty much out of the COVID situation, we need to know what the next step is," he said. "All I see is that downward trend in population decline reversing, so we need to figure out what's the next step and be one step ahead of that. That's where this is all coming in. It's really looking to the future."

He additionally noted that results of the survey should be beneficial to existing hotels looking to make improvements.

Ladd expects Core Distinction Group to have its report complete by the end of the month or the first week of September.

"Even if we don't get anything, let's say they don't come in for some reason, at least we'll know what kind of a hotel we can go after," he added. "They don't have to come to us, we can go to them."