Homer may see a new hotel pop up in town by the end of the summer. Aspen Hotels plans to finalize a deal on roughly five acres of land off the Sterling Highway across from Safeway later this month, and it hopes to start construction in May.
The architect of the 72-room hotel, Rich Conneen, said its design will mirror the company’s other hotels around the state with wood construction and colorful paint. But it will be shorter in order to accommodate Homer’s 35-foot commercial height restriction along the highway.
“We modified our design with the lower roof height and we also took extra measures to keep our cables on the front by lowering them and just modifying the rooms to make that happen,” he said. “We've also set the building back as far as we could from the road.”
The Advisory Planning Commission approved a conditional use permit for the project late last year, but some members of the commission were concerned over the smell of a nearby sewer treatment plant. Conneen waved that off.
“We haven't encountered it, and we kind of got the impression that’s really not a problem,” he said. “It has been in the past and there's been great steps to abate that. So we’re just moving on from that because it's a great location.”
Conneen said the hotel will employ about 15 workers, and he said some of the land will be donated to expand trails along Beluga Slough.
Aspen still needs to obtain a building permit from the state fire marshal and another permit from the state Department of Transportation due to the building being off a state highway, but Conneen said the hotel should be open by the end of the year.
