Washington will spend S$4,000 for an evaluation regarding the feasibility of someone building a hotel in the city’s downtown district.

With Mayor Mac Hodges breaking a 2-2 vote with his “yes” vote, the City Council, during its meeting last week, gave the green light to PKF Consulting USA to provide advisory services related to potential development of the former Belk building and Hotel Louise into a 51-room boutique hotel. The evaluation, part of the advisory services, would determine whether the proposed project has a good chance of succeeding. Councilmen Larry Beeman and Richard Brooks voted in the affirmative, with council members Doug Mercer and William Pitt voting in the negative.

The proposed project includes a large owner’s suite in the hotel, 15,000 square feet of retail space, 5,500 square feet of event space and 41 parking spaces.

Mercer said he could not justify spending $4,000 on another study that would, in his opinion, replicate what other similar studies have determined. He doubts that a new study would provide any new information. Hodges argued for the new study, saying it would be something that potential developers could take to a bank to seek financing for the project. Previous studies do not meet that level of detail, he said.

The new study’s findings are expected to be presented at the council’s Nov. 23 meeting.

The latest downtown hotel proposal is connected with a redevelopment plan involving the University of North Carolina’s School of Government.

During a meeting earlier this year, the city received information about the project.

“For the last eight to 10 months, under the approval of council and guidance of (then-City Manager) Brian Alligood, we have been negotiating on behalf of the city option contracts for two key properties here in downtown Washington,” said Jordan Jones, a project manager with the School of Government’s Development Finance Initiative, to the City Council at that meeting. “The goal here is not for the city to acquire the properties but to acquire site control and option contracts so we can assign this purchase contract to a future developer that we will be identifying in our work as we start getting more involved in this process.”

Earlier this year, city staff began preparing contract documents concerning proposed options on the two downtown properties. The city intends to assign those options, after following required procedures, to a to-be-determined third party or third parties for development purposes. The city hired the University of North Carolina’s School of Government to assist it with this process.

The proposed aggregate cost for the options on the two properties is $23,000. The aggregate cost for acquisition of the two properties is $841,000. The city plans to use general-fund money to finance the cost of the options for the two properties.

Some people have expressed concerns with city money being earmarked for the project. If a downtown hotel is viable, they content, a private developer likely would have already built it, they contend. Several previous proposals to build a downtown hotel in the past 25 or so years have not come to fruition, they note. They believe proposals to renovate an existing building for use as a new hotel have proven too costly, thereby discouraging developers.