JANESVILLE
A developer’s hotel on Janesville’s northeast side has consistently hit 80% room occupancy since 2019, even during the doldrums of the COVID-19 pandemic, a hotel operator said.
That has given the developer a taste for more—90 rooms more, to be exact.
If city powers approve it, a developer plans to build a 90-room hotel at 2702 Pontiac Place under the Tru by Hilton nameplate. The hotel would be built next to the TownePlace Suites extended-stay hotel.
West Bend developer Kraig Sadownikow, a partner in the proposed hotel, is part-owner of the TownePlace Suites, a Marriott hotel that was completed and opened in 2019.
Sadownikow wasn’t immediately available for comment Monday, but Benjamin Brantmeier, who manages the TownePlace Suites, said the hospitality industry in Janesville has begun to rebound out of the worst of the pandemic.
Brantmeier said as a whole, hotel occupancy rates in Janesville have improved. They’re averaging about 70% in recent weeks, although he said TownePlace has maintained an 80% to 85% occupancy rate throughout the pandemic.
Brantmeier said that has owners of his hotel eager to further tap Janesville’s hospitality market—one that has become more competitive in the past five years after two new hotels broke ground along the Interstate and downtown.
“At the end of January and first part of February, our hotel was oversold by 17 rooms for three days in a row. And we ended up lucky because one of our competitors had some rooms for us so we could relocate the guests to, but if this continues on, year over year, we’re going to need this (new Hilton) hotel sooner rather than later,” Brantmeier said.
The new hotel would bring Janesville’s hotel stock to about 900 rooms. That would bring the city closer to its previous high-water mark in the early 2000s of about 1,000 hotel rooms, according to city records.
The city’s plan commission will review a conditional-use permit for the project March 21. The project has been on the city’s radar since before the pandemic hit in 2020, officials said.
If built, the hotel would be a Tru by Hilton, a brand more focused on shorter stays compared to its neighbor across the lot, the TownePlace. Brantmeier said Tru hotels tend to place more emphasis on onsite and lobby amenities such as dining and entertainment.
They’re aimed at appealing to business travelers and families in town for a few days or a weekend.
Christine Rebout, who heads the Janesville Area Convention and Visitors Bureau, said that over the last year, her office has seen growing interest in overnight or weekend stays for arts and culture tourism.
She said her office finds itself now directing a growing number of tourists, from international travelers to women’s clubs on weekend trips, some who she said are coming to town to check out newer painted murals in the city’s downtown. To that can be added a return to form for youth sports tournaments, both local and regional, as the region starts to emerge from the wintertime grip of the pandemic.
Janesville long has been a hotel draw for families attending youth sports tournaments here and in nearby metros of Madison and Rockford, Illinois.
Talk of the new hotel comes as the city and group of private backers are considering whether to build the Woodman’s Community Center, a proposed two-sheet ice arena and convention center at Uptown Janesville, the city’s main mall on the northeast side.
Rebout said the new arena and 20,000-square-foot convention hall would generate millions of dollars of new tourism activity here, and it would bolster the local hotel sector.
The new Tru by Hilton would be clustered in the 1-mile area around the city’s two main Interstate 90/39 interchanges at Humes Road and Milton Avenue, but it also would be less than a mile from the ice arena.
“If you look at something like an indoor athletic and conference center, we’d be bringing families for sports tournaments but also meeting and conference business in here on Tuesdays to Thursdays on a regular basis. That would create tremendous demand. That project will undoubtedly bring (new) hotels with it,” Rebout said.
