SpringHill Suites taking shape in Ooltewah
Five years after a SpringHill Suites opened on Chattanooga’s downtown waterfront, another $15 million SpringHill Suites is preparing to open near Interstate 75 in Ooltewah.
A Knoxville development that already owns and operates about 30 hotels in four Southeastern states is scheduled to open the first of at least a couple of hotels it plans for Chattanooga and Cleveland, Tenn. Gibson Hotel Management (GHM) is building the 106-room hotel on Old Lee Highway at the Ooltewah exit off I-75.
The five-story, all-suites inn will include a restaurant, bar, meeting rooms, swimming pool and fitness center and will be
designed to cater to both business and leisure travelers.
“This area is booming right now around Volkswagen, McKee Foods, Amazon and other businesses, and we see a lot of growth in this market that we hope to serve,” Joe Grieco, vice president of operations for GHM, said Monday. “The benefit of an all-suites hotel like this SpringHill Suites is that it serves a lot of business needs during the week and can also tap into the leisure market on the weekend.”
The new SpringHill Suites is among seven hotels now being built or under development in Chattanooga that will collectively add more than 800 more hotel rooms to the local market. Grieco said most of the new projects are being built downtown, “but we see a lot of opportunity still in Ooltewah, which continues to grow.”
The SpringHill Suites taking shape on Old Lee Highway is sandwiched between a half dozen restaurants added in the same block over the past couple of years. The hotel is also just a half mile away from Cambridge Square, which is adding both corporate offices and a variety of restaurants, stores and bars.
Grieco said the target opening for the new hotel is Oct. 24 and he said the developers are still working with Marriott Corp., which franchises SpringHill Suites, to finalize room prices.
Chattanooga’s first SpringHill Suites in Chattanooga — a 116-room hotel located next to the city’s marina off of Riverfront Parkway on the downtown waterfront — opened in the spring of 2012.
The newest SpringHill Suites will be headed by Bill Mish, a 30-year industry veteran who was president of the Tennessee Hotel and Motel Association in 2010 and previously manager of the Double Tree Hotel in downtown Chattanooga, among other hotel jobs.
GHM, which was founded by Michael Gibson two decades ago, is opening two hotels this year and three in 2018, Grieco said.