Aurora focusing on convention center hopes

If you've got a plan for a 300-room hotel with 30,000 square feet of convention space, Aurora would like to hear from you.

Based on zoning code amendments discussed during Tuesday's planning and development committee, as part of the city's current moratorium on hotel development, planning officials hope to limit smaller hotels in hopes of landing a large convention center within a half-mile of I-88 or along the downtown fringe area.

Recent market studies show the city can support an additional 200-300 hotel rooms to be built.

Officials fear allowing any more "limited service" hotels to open would drive away any developers interested in bringing a larger full-service hotel to the city.

Assistant Director of Community Development John Curley said the city should also limit the list of allowable construction materials to concrete and steel, eliminating wood-framed buildings.

"We've experienced some functional obsolescence with some of our wood-framed hotels in town," Curley said. "So we're trying to make sure we're getting a sustainable product that will stand the test of time."

In future weeks, Planning Director Stephane Phifer said the aldermen will also be considering adopting a hotel convention center master plan based on a complete market study analysis and then complete and approve a hotel licensing program.

Those two elements are still before the planning and developing committee.

Sue Voss, executive director of the Aurora Convention and Tourism Bureau, actually approached the council several months ago with the idea of focusing on landing a larger scale convention center hotel instead of saturating the city with limited service hotels.