A 175-room luxury hotel is set to be part of the downtown Rockville landscape across the street from the city’s new Town Center development.
Officials told The Examiner on Tuesday that they’re in talks with a sister company of the boutique-style W Hotel chain to build the business traveler-centered hotel on the 3-acre space in front of Regal Cinemas on Montgomery Avenue, where there’s currently a pay parking lot.
The company, ALoft, has no hotels built, but it plans to build dozens nationwide in the near future.
Rockville’s hotel is to be part of a $260 million deal to construct two mixed-use towers on the site — one with the hotel plus retail and housing units, the other with just retail and residential units. Marc Dubick, president of Duball LLC, the development firm handling the project, said if everything goes as planned, there will be of 1,250 parking spaces underground, 485 residential units and 40,000 square feet of shops.
It’s a major boon for Montgomery County because Rockville has never had a major hotel downtown. Sally Sternbach, from the city’s economic development department, said that for years, the area has been considered too barren to draw a major hotel chain. That all changed when businesses began opening in the Town Center.
“It was a real catalytic event,” Dubick said. The news of the hotel came on the same day that city, state and county officials officially dedicated the Town Center project, praising the project’s success in a host of speeches.
Rockville Mayor Larry Giammo said finishing the Town Center has been the one goal he wanted to complete during his tenure. As he prepares to leave office this fall, the wheels are in motion to build similar mixed-use developments on parcels around Rockville.
What’s next
» Duball LLC must get the project through the necessary Rockville planning board approvals in he next several months. The goal is to begin building one of the two towers by March.
