City assists downtown hotel with streetscaping

Developers of a downtown hotel will receive a boost of public funding to help pay for enhanced sidewalks and streetscaping around the building.

The Empire Hotel, which is under construction at the corner of Spokane Avenue and Second Street, is set to receive up to $147,000 in tax-increment funds from the city. The money will be used to create a wider sidewalk, curb and gutter, install street trees, benches, a trash can and other landscaping improvements in the city’s right-of-way.

City Council on July 6 unanimously approved the funds for the Whitefish Hotel Group, which is constructing the 86-room hotel.

“If we want these improvements we should pay for those,” City Manager Chuck Stearns told council. “These are different from what we usually require from developments.”

The wider sidewalk can be used in the future for a bicycle promenade that is called for in the city’s 2015 downtown master plan update.

Stearns said the improvements would be similar to other downtown street improvements done on Central Avenue and adjacent streets.

The $10 million three-story hotel is estimated to generate about $50,000 of TIF revenue each year, according to the city. The return to the city by the end of the TIF district in 2020, is estimated at $157,000.

In 2014, council gave preliminary approval to a request by the developers of the hotel to use about $500,000 in TIF funds to relocate a sanitary sewer main line and other improvements. However, during the design of the hotel, the developers chose to leave the sewer line in place.