The City is giving the downtown landowner and the hotel group working to bring a Southern Living Hotel to Auburn until the end of the month to reach a deal.
If no deal is reached by the end of February — March 1 is Friday — the City plans to move forward with a smaller, 300-space parking garage on the site formerly occupied by the Baptist Student Center on South College Street.
The hotel was initially planned for a site on North College Street that stretches from the University Inn to Regions. It includes Quixotes Bar and Grill along with the development housing Pita Pit and The Bike Shop.
Lifestyle + Hotel Group had been working closely with Godbold Development Partners, the development group that owns that land, to reach an agreement to put the hotel in the heart of downtown Auburn. They reached an impasse earlier this month.
Before the plan to build the hotel was announced, the City was already planning to build a parking garage on the Baptist Student Center site between the rest of the land on which the Southern Living Hotel was to be built. When talks to bring the hotel began, the City agreed to sell their newly acquired land for $80,000 in exchange for some of the land near the rear along Wright Street.
The new land along Wright Street was to give the City more space for a larger garage and allow the Southern Living Hotel to stretch along South College Street. The Baptist Student Center would relocate to the bottom floor of the new parking garage.
"We were only going to do that if this hotel with its associated restaurants — with the Bo Jackson, Chris Hastings restaurant — and the retail space, which we were hoping would be some kind of urban grocer or Target, was built," City Manager Jim Buston said. "If the hotel doesn't go through, we can't build our bigger deck, we can only build the deck we initially decided to do."
With the developer and hotel group at an impasse, though, the City is planning to move ahead with their plan to build a smaller deck on the same site.
“So at the end of the month if we do not hear that they have been successful in coming to a deal, then we will pull the plug and build the smaller deck," Buston told The Plainsman.
The project is already behind schedule. The City had hoped the new garage and new Baptist Student Center would be open by August, Buston said. That deadline has now been pushed back by months.
Buston said the Baptist Student Center has been patient with the plans, but the City recognizes they have a promise to keep.
It will take nine months to complete the deck.
Buston said the City is building a parking garage with or without the hotel project because public parking downtown is in high demand.
“There’s a lot of parking in the day, but still at night, it’s hard to find parking," Buston said.
Lifestyle + Hotel Group is actively pursuing other locations for a Southern Living hotel in Auburn, CEO and President of LHG Bill Shoaf told The Plainsman earlier this month.
Shoaf said he cannot speak to what Godbold will do, but LHG has given Godbold notice of the active search and still plans to build a Southern Living Hotel in the downtown urban core.
“We’ve just run out of time, so we’re actively looking at alternative sites,” Shoaf said.
LHG hopes to lock down a location soon, Shoaf said.
Regardless of the location, the Southern Living hotel will feature the same amenities as the plans for the North College Street location did, which includes a rooftop lounge and the restaurant in coordination with Bo Jackson.
“We’ll have all the things we were going to have on College Street, we’re just going to pick all that up and find a new home for it,” Shoaf said.
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Chip Brownlee, senior in journalism and political science, is the editor-in-chief of The Auburn Plainsman.
