Multiple hotels planned or under construction in metro area

JACKSON, Miss. (WLBT) - If you know someone looking for a place to stay in the Jackson area, the options are multiplying. At least half a dozen hotels are planned or nearly finished.

On State Street in Fondren, a new hotel is nearing completion at Lorenz Boulevard on the former site of Que Sera restaurant. It’s a short walk from the University of Mississippi Medical Center.

“This is a 125-room Homewood Suites by Hilton," says developer Chico Patel. "It’s an extended-stay hotel that will cater to the medical area here (and) the downtown area.”

Patel’s Ridgeland-based Heritage Hospitality Group has about three dozen other hotels, but this $18 million project is his first in Fondren.

“I think it’s a unique area in the city of Jackson," he says. "We’re very fortunate that we’ve got this hotel and this property in Jackson.”

He could soon have company. A hotel called The Fondren, under the Aloft brand, has been proposed right up the street at Mitchell Avenue. It would take in the former Kolb’s Cleaners as its lobby. No site work has been done, however, and architect Roy Decker told 3 On Your Side this week his firm is working to evaluate its financing and project options.

Farther up the road, Desai Hotel Group is behind a proposed Hampton Inn on a vacant lot next to the Pig & Pint. No work has started there, either, but the company’s CEO, Sunny Desai, told 3 On Your Side he hopes to make an announcement about that project soon.

Patel and his partners are also building two hotels on Riverwind Drive in Pearl. A Home2 Suites is nearing completion across the street from the Hilton Garden Inn.

Just to the east, the metro area’s first Avid hotel will be built behind Logan’s Roadhouse. Patel says Avid is a new brand from IHG aimed at millennials. The Pearl location will be the state’s second, after the one Patel’s group built in Southaven.

Heritage Hospitality Group is also behind a planned Tru by Hilton and a Holiday Inn Express in Ridgeland. In addition, Heritage is converting the Cabot Lodge in Ridgeland from a hotel to an assisted-living facility. That project is in the design phase now, and Patel says it will have a new name when it is complete.

Elsewhere in Ridgeland, A new Hampton Inn recently opened at Steed Road and Highland Colony Parkway. It joins a growing list of new options where people can lay their head.

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