Hampton Inn hotel arriving to Concord in coming year

CONCORD >> Construction of a four- story Hampton Inn hotel is scheduled to begin in April.

The 86-room, 48,000- square-foot hotel is designed in a Spanish architectural style and is expected to be completed by summer 2022.

Like most other Hampton Inn hotels in the Hilton brand, the development will be a three-star-rated hotel targeting mostly people traveling to Concord for business.

The architect who designed the building said Thursday the hotel — with mission-tile roofs and outlooker beams — will mirror the Spanish- colonial character of the nearby Todos Santos Plaza, an open community green space on Willow Pass Boulevard.

“We went outside the (Hilton) standards for a facade upgrade,” said Doug Ely of architectural company DSEA of Southern California. “It will not be a cookie- cuttertype product where you say, ‘I’ve seen this same building before.’ It won’t have that feel to it — it’ll have a very contextual relationship with the city of Concord.”

At a meeting Tuesday, the City Council unanimously approved a land use change to support the development.

Planning officials said at the meeting that the hotel will try to attract short-term business travelers with amenities such as in-house dining services and a fitness facility.

Although it has 86 rooms, the building will come with only 76 parking spaces (four for electrical vehicles), an element council members said they would want to revisit in the coming years.

Councilwoman Laura Hoffmeister also worried aloud that the development would be completed as promised, referencing past projects that had been billed as nicer hotels but wound up as motels after a change in land ownership.

“I just don’t want to make those same mistakes where we’re promised something and then two years later something else comes in,” Hoffmeister said.

Landowner Bill Herrick assured the council that he is familiar with the Concord area and intends to see the hotel — including its parking availability — through to completion.