Avid hotel, a Holiday Inn brand, planned for Roseville

Roseville soon will get a new hotel just off Interstate 35W.

The planned four-story, 86-room inn will likely be an Avid hotel, a new midscale brand by the owners of Holiday Inn, developer Tom Noble told the Roseville City Council this week.

The goal will be to open the hotel by April 2020, said Noble, president of St. Louis Park-based West Real Estate.

The vacant site long had been designated for an office building, complete with underground garage, in hopes of attracting new higher-wage jobs to Roseville.

But after the owner of the property shopped it around for years with no bites, the City Council agreed that the land's best use may be as a hotel site. So the council voted unanimously Monday to change the zoning.

While the city would have preferred office space, a hotel is better than letting the site sit vacant, Mayor Dan Roe said.

Just off I-35W and tucked between a Residence Inn and a Fairfield Inn and Suites, the site is ready-made for a hotel, said Kari Collins, the city's community development director.

"When it comes to proximity, it's right off the highway and by a number of employment centers and [Rosedale] mall," Collins said. The site is less than a 10-minute drive to the State Fairgrounds and within walking distance of Rosedale Center.

The hotel is expected to create about 12 full-time jobs, most of which will pay $13 or $14 an hour, Noble said.

As the home of Rosedale and located at the confluence of several major traffic arteries, Roseville long has been a steady hub for retail and service industry jobs. But the City Council has been trying to set aside space to lure companies or industries that pay higher wages.

The Avid hotel will be the fourth to open along Centre Point Drive, a road that stretches less than a mile near the I-35W and County Road D intersection.

The site may have been too small to fit a sprawling office complex, Collins said.

"Just for this particular site, because it's smaller, a vertical development may be better positioned than offices, which need a larger footprint," she said. "We still have a lot of opportunities for office development to occur in that area. So taking this one off the table isn't necessarily going to hurt that."

Greg Stanley • 612-673-4882