Hoffman Estates OKs Holiday Inn Express next to Cabela's
Hoffman Estates officials on Monday night unanimously approved construction of a 121-room Holiday Inn Express hotel immediately south of the Cabela's store in the Prairie Stone Business Park.
The village board's vote also allows the separation of the 3.2-acre site on which the hotel will be built from the 26.4-acre property Cabela's will continue to own.
The four-story hotel proposed by Chicago-based GH of Hoffman Estates LLC will take 15 months to build, and the hope is to start before winter, company representative Alpesh Patel said.
He added that the company recognized the site as a good one from the moment it was first seen, with the nearby office buildings expected to generate visitors.
Among the other tenants of Prairie Stone are the Sears Centre Arena and Sears Holdings' corporate headquarters.
The only existing hotel in the business park is the eight-story, 295-room Chicago Marriott Northwest on the far east side at 4800 Hoffman Blvd. But village officials never intended that it should stand alone there, Mayor Bill McLeod said.
There were proposals for other hotels before the recession that never came to fruition, he added.
"It's a different kind of hotel," McLeod said of the Holiday Inn Express. "Not everyone wants to stay in a full-service hotel."
The site on which it will be built was originally intended to be used by Cabela's for outdoor dog kennels and horse corrals.
Construction of the hotel will take away 127 parking spaces from Cabela's lot, but village officials believe the 185,000-square-foot store still will have sufficient parking without them.
The Saddle Room restaurant, which will lie southwest of the hotel, won't be affected by the construction. The restaurant was built in 2012 on land that also formerly belonged to Cabela's.