Logan City Council approves study on possible new downtown hotel

This week the Logan City Council discussed possibilities of a future new hotel in downtown. Council members approved conducting a study about the local demand and projected revenue.

LOGAN Logan City Council members voted Tuesday to fund a study on whether a new hotel should be placed in the city’s downtown.

The council approved spending around $17,500 on the study, which will be conducted by REVPAR International, Inc. City Fire Chief Scott Beckett told council members the company comes highly recommended by the USDA’s Community Liaison to Logan, Adam Stollings.

“This company does a hotel study to see if you have enough lodging, if you have enough rooms available, negative rooms, positive rooms,” he said. “It may come out to where we have enough and don’t need another hotel. But, I was telling him our vision: we would like to repurpose a downtown building to have either a boutique hotel or something to revitalize one of our downtown buildings. And I was encouraged, because his conversation with me was that that’s the trend now. That’s what we’re going to. They want to go back to the downtown hotels. So, he said they actually have the resources to reach out and put is in touch – if it were to come back in a good light – to put us in touch with people who does investments or construction and stuff like that.”

Beckett said the city should have enough money spread across other USDA Rural Development projects to get a hotel project underway at no additional cost to the city.

The study will examine local demand, the performance of nearby hotels, and projected revenue. It will also assess how many rooms a new hotel should have, what type of hotel would be most appropriate, and how much it could cost to build. The company plans to use standard industry tools, including Revenue Per Available Room, to guide its analysis and will report its findings to the city once the study is complete. According to City Fire Chief Scott Beckett, one potential location the city is considering is the former Peebles building on Stratton Street, which he said was itself a hotel at one time. He told council members even a small hotel could make a big difference for the city.

“It would be great to have a downtown hotel back in operation in the City of Logan,” he said. “It would be even greater to be able to call it the Aracoma Hotel.”

Downtown Logan has not had a hotel since the famous Aracoma Hotel was destroyed by a fire in 2010. The four-story, 96-room hotel originally opened in 1918 and was once considered the largest and most elaborate building in Logan County.

City officials say a new hotel could be a major support for the tourism industry and encourage more business activity in the downtown area.

In addition to the hotel study, the site of the former Aracoma Hotel is being incorporated into a new historical initiative. The West Virginia Mine Wars Museum, as part of its effort to develop the Mine Wars Trail, is working to establish a permanent exhibit at the location. According to the museum executive director, Kenzie New Walker, the hotel was a historically significant headquarters for the Logan Defenders during the labor conflicts of the early 20th century.

PHOTO | Robert Fields