[KevinFromTexas]

http://www.wacotrib.com/news/busines...a043c531a.html

Hot Waco hotel market reignites talk of big riverfront hotel

Posted: Friday, January 15, 2016 7:01 pm
By J.B. SMITH

City leaders have been dreaming for more than a decade of a new full-service hotel to bolster Waco’s profile as a destination, with nothing to show for it but old watercolor renderings of what might have been.

Catalyst Urban Development of Dallas is negotiating to do a master development on city-owned land along the riverfront including restaurants, shopping and hundreds of housing and office units. The plan also includes a multistory hotel with boat access at Interstate 35 and the river, behind Clifton Robinson Tower, though it is proposed as a phase in the indefinite future.

“You have to work off the existing market today,” he said. “You can’t finance it based on ‘build it and they will come.’ . . . The tricky thing about a full-service hotel with all the amenities is that it’s very expensive. Those are huge numbers.”

In the most recent hotel occupancy reports from third quarter 2015, Greater Waco had an occupancy rate of 72.6 percent, lagging behind only Austin and Amarillo among Texas cities. The statewide average was 64.9 percent.