Onondaga County program to help hotel developers, operators

SYRACUSE — It was back on June 4 when Onondaga County Executive Ryan McMahon announced plans for a hotel initiative, and the program is now accepting grant applications. The Onondaga County Hotel Initiative will be seeded with $4 million and will award grants ranging from $50,000 to $750,000 to developers. The grants are meant to help in closing funding gaps in new hotel construction and/or give existing hotels incentive to add rooms to their facilities in Onondaga County. The county will establish criteria to grade each proposal including, but not limited to, size of hotel, how quickly it will come online, and jobs created, per the announcement. Onondaga County Community Development will operate the program and will award funding grants “on a rolling basis.” In the announcement, McMahon’s office said, “Tourism and convention business have served as a key driver of revenue and growth with respect to the local economy. Key to that success has been an abundance of diverse and quality hotel rooms and meeting space. In recent years, we have seen a significant number of hotels come offline and subsequently jeopardize our ability to attract new convention business or accommodate visitors and tourists to the area.” It went on to say, “Further compounding the issue are the massive investments being made by Micron [Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ: MU)] at the White Pine Commerce Park as well as the numerous supply-chain companies expected to follow suit.” More information can be found at website http://ongov.net/cd/hotel-initiative.html Or, you can contact Marty Skahen, director of community development, at martinskahen@ongov.net or (315) 435-3558.