A new upscale five-story Element by Westin hotel on a roughly 2.033-acre site in south Arlington was approved 8-1 by the city’s Planning and Zoning Commission, and the proposal will be heard Sept. 16 by the City Council.
Commissioner Linda Finley voted against the proposal.
The undeveloped site at 4560 Waxwing Drive in the Westpointe Business Center addition is located about a quarter mile east of the Arlington Municipal Airport.
There are three other hotels, a Hampton Inn & Suites, Homewood Suites and Fairfield Inn & Suites located north of the proposed location. The Hampton Inn & Suites was the first of the three hotels to be constructed, with the latter two being built between 2009 and 2019.
The applicant for the zoning request is Arlington-based Graham Associates, and the development is owned by Texarkana-based DPG Partners and Arlington-based Con-Real, both veteran hotel operators in the Arlington area.
Gerald Alley, president and CEO of Con-Real, said his company has been active in the area for many years and was the developer and owner of the Hilton Garden Inn located in the Arlington Entertainment District and other properties. Mike Daugherty, founder and CEO of DPG Partners and partner and CEO of DPG Hotels, said his company developed and owned the Hampton Inn & Suites and the Homewood Suites in the area before selling them. Daugherty lives in Prosper.
He said the southern corridor of Arlington has been a successful location for his company to operate in and that he sees great potential for the Element hotel project.
Alley said that he’s been a resident of the city for 45 years.
“We employ approximately 80 and our organization works (all) over the country, but Arlington is our home,” Alley said.
The companies propose constructing a 72,305-square-foot Element hotel on the site, which is associated with Marriott International, and will have 107 rooms.
All guest rooms will be accessed only via interior corridors. The average room size will be 386 square feet, and the room types will include a combination of standard rooms and suites, the proposal said. The rooms will be 60% suites, and the suites will be equipped with a full-size refrigerator, dishwasher, microwave, cooktop, sink and a business/workspace area, the applicants’ proposal said.
The first floor of the hotel will consist of six hotel rooms and there will be a 3,000-square-foot lobby area, 661-square-feet of meeting space, an 880-square-foot fitness center, and a food preparation/breakfast area that will provide a continental breakfast to guests.
Both Alley and Daugherty said they expect solid occupancy for the hotel, based on the current occupancy numbers for existing hotels in the area. They said they expect to get clients from new businesses in the area such as E-Space, from people flying into the Arlington Municipal Airport and even from the entertainment district to the north.
Daugherty said his company has owned the property where the hotel would be built for 20 years and sees the Element hotel as the best use for the 2.033-acre site.
Ignacio Nunez, commission chairman, agreed.
“I think it’s going to benefit the citizens. It is going to increase our hotel tax, which in turn, helps to ameliorate as much as we possibly can the property tax rate of the citizens. The more hotels, the better it is for the citizens of Arlington. I think this is the highest and best used in this location,” he said.
Lance Murray is a freelance contributor covering business for the Arlington Report.
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