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Hilton Garden Inn Speeds Up Expansion Plans

May 02, 2007 - Daily Journal

Six months after opening, the Hilton Garden Inn is drawing up expansion plans. Tom Ricketts, whose Memphis-based Master Hospitality owns the Tupelo hotel, said he intends to add 40 two-bed rooms and eight two-room suites to the hotel in the Fairpark District. He said that if he can get plans from the architect within 90 days, construction will start in early fall and he hopes to unveil the new rooms in summer 2008. The expansion will be built on land west of the 110-room hotel, between the Hilton Garden Inn and the Fairpark at Main building that will house restaurants Park Heights and The Grill and up to eight other tenants.Six months after opening, the Hilton Garden Inn is drawing up expansion plans.

Tom Ricketts, whose Memphis-based Master Hospitality owns the Tupelo hotel, said he intends to add 40 two-bed rooms and eight two-room suites to the hotel in the Fairpark District. He said that if he can get plans from the architect within 90 days, construction will start in early fall and he hopes to unveil the new rooms in summer 2008. The expansion will be built on land west of the 110-room hotel, between the Hilton Garden Inn and the Fairpark at Main building that will house restaurants Park Heights and The Grill and up to eight other tenants.

The Fairpark District, once the county's fairgrounds, is a 50-acre urban renewal development started in 1999 by the Tupelo Redevelopment Agency. The city issued $22.7 million in bonds for the purchase of property and development of infrastructure, with a projection that private investment eventually would be three times that amount.

Among Fairpark's occupants are City Hall, the Hilton Garden Inn and the Renasant Center for IDEAs, a business incubator. In Ricketts' original contract with the TRA, the hotel agreed to add 40 rooms once it had 75 percent occupancy for 12 months. Ricketts said the hotel is not at that threshold but declined to give a specific number. "I've got enough faith that the business is going to be there, so instead of waiting until 75 percent occupancy, I'm just going to go ahead and do it," Ricketts said.

Shari Long, the hotel's director of sales, said that when the hotel opened Nov. 10, 2006, expansion plans were so "far down the road we weren't even thinking about it." She said the management originally anticipated looking at expansion within two to five years of opening. "It's been moved from the back burner to the fast track," Long said. "It's speculative with what they think will happen with Toyota, but I think it's a good move for us to go and get the rooms out there for the clients."

Ricketts also said the expansion will help the hotel cater more toward its convention and wedding crowd by adding more rooms with two queen-size beds. The original hotel, he said, was a prototype that Hilton encouraged, but the management in Tupelo has found that it is more geared toward business travelers. However, business travelers have requested more of the two-room suites that separate the living room from the bedroom. Thus, Ricketts plans to add eight suites to the new tower. He noted that the expansion and the $22 million he invested in Tupelo speak volumes about the good people in the area and the growth of the downtown area and Fairpark. "I never dreamed of anything like this happening to Tupelo," he said.

 By Carlie Kollath

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