Common Council Approves

Study for New Downtown Hotel

By JENNIFER HILL • Special to www.AllOTSEGO.com

ONEONTA – Downtown Oneonta could soon be the site of a new boutique hotel.

Oneonta’s Common Council authorized the Mayor to contract with the consulting firm, REVPAR International, Inc., Alexandria, Virginia to do a marketing feasibility study for developing a downtown-area boutique hotel during their meeting on Tuesday, Nov. 20.

Funded by a state grant of $19,000, the feasibility study will determine if a boutique hotel would be a good addition to Oneonta.

Mayor Herzig explained in the Council meeting the marketing feasibility study will provide information on the hotel’s optimal size, the number of rooms, downtown location, and other important attributes. The study can then be distributed to interested developers. Unlike national hotel chains, a boutique hotel usually has a unique design and characteristics, determined by its owner.

Oneonta Mayor Gary Herzig said the future boutique hotel will meet the high demand for rooms, especially during the summer when baseball camps bring in 150-200 teams weekly. The youth who attend the popular baseball camps stay in bunkhouses, but their parents often stay in hotels and use the time for their vacations. The downtown hotel would be another place summer vacationers could use as well as families visiting college students during the rest of the year.

Although the boutique hotel is proposed for Oneonta’s downtown, it is a separate project from the downtown revitalization project awarded $10 million by New York Governor Cuomo. The downtown revitalization project is multifaceted, with ranging from re-doing building facades to developing a residential community for artists. Still, a new, uniquely designed hotel downtown could end up being an integral part of Oneonta’s future downtown.

REVPAR will be able to start the study immediately and finish in January 2019.