Fayetteville Marriott Back on Track

On Sept. 11, plans for a Courtyard by Marriott in Fayetteville fell through.

“We got ready to close, and that plane slammed into that building, and I lost all my investors,” said Curtis Wegner, chief manager of Hotel Development LLC of Memphis and managing partner of Fayetteville Hotel LLC.

Eleven months later, with some new investors on board, a new franchise agreement was signed, and construction of the $9.2 million, five-story, 108-room hotel is scheduled to begin in the fourth quarter of this year.

“I lost some investors, and I gained some investors,” Wegner said.

Tom Ricketts of Master Hospitality in Memphis will be managing partner and operator of the Fayetteville Marriott. Kevin Kelly of the Pendat Group in Memphis is another partner. Wegner said there will be three or four silent partners, some of whom reside in Northwest Arkansas.

The new hotel is planned for a 2.5-acre lot on Plainview Street, just to the south of Millsap Road and the local office of Procter & Gamble. The building’s footprint is 16,100 SF. Wegner said construction should be completed during the third quarter of 2003.

Wegner’s large-scale development plan was approved by the Fayetteville Planning Commission on Aug. 27, 2001. He has requested an extension because the Planning Commission’s approval is good for only one year.

The land is owned by 775 Millsap LLC and Millsap Road Investment Co., said Hank Kelley of Flake & Kelley Management Co. in Little Rock. Flake & Kelley is serving as the property manager.

“We don’t have a closed contract,” Kelley said on Aug. 14, stressing that no deal to purchase the land had yet been signed. “The contract is a conditional contract. It has buyer and seller conditions in it.”

But apparently that’s just another one of the things on Wegner’s to-do list.

Wegner said the hotel will serve P&G and Washington Regional Medical Center, which is moving to a new hospital in that vicinity in late August. He said the hotel will also serve vendors to Wal-Mart Stores Inc. in Bentonville and will be in a good location for people who want to come to Fayetteville to shop at the Northwest Arkansas Mall.

The Courtyard by Marriott will have an indoor swimming pool, sauna, workout room and meeting room that can accommodate about 50 people. Wegner said room rates will be about $100 per night when the hotel opens in late 2003.

Wegner said the healthy economy of Northwest Arkansas makes the area attractive to hotel developers, even in the post 9-11 economy.

Wegner said Hotel Development LLC currently has four hotels under construction, none of which is in Arkansas.

Marriott International Inc. has about 2,400 lodging properties worldwide, including more than 450 Courtyard by Marriott hotels. That amounts to 435,983 hotel rooms. The company began in 1927 as a small root beer stand in Washington, D.C., operated by J. Willard and Alice S. Marriott. Marriott International had sales of $20 billion last year.