BEAUMONT, Texas — Beaumont City Council members voted unanimously Monday to take the first steps toward bringing a new hotel to downtown.
These steps include conducting a study to explore whether a hotel would thrive in the heart of the city.
"If the marketing study comes back and I suspect that it will saying that we can support a full service hotel downtown, it will truly be something revolutionary," said Beaumont City Councilmember Mike Getz.
Council members and property developers from Garfield Public/Private LLC. have the plan to build a hotel right next to the Beaumont Civic Center.
But before developers can make plans to break ground, the big question everyone is asking is whether the hotel would survive or not.
Chairman of Garfield LLC. Raymond Garfield says they're going to do a market study in the next 60-90 days.
"We're going to look at the city of Beaumont. We're going to look at the marketplace between here, Lake Charles, Houston. Look at the civic center. Look at the demands for meetings in the city," Garfield said.
Getz says, this demand is very much alive within the city of Beaumont.
"We're falling behind other cities that are developing those so we need to be competitive," Getz said.
Garfield says hotel construction will be funded through bonds, so tax payers don't have to foot the bill.
The bond money will be paid back once the hotel is up and running.
"We're not going to spend 30 or 40 million dollars building a small hotel. We're going to end up spending 80 or 90 million building a full service hotel and the community needs to be able to absorb it," Garfield said.
If the marketing study proves successful, developers can move to phase two, which includes architectural drawings and renderings and that could take six to eight months.
"Then you're going out for bid for construction firms. This whole project will take two to three years," Getz said.
Bringing a new hotel to downtown Beaumont is something Garfield says he hopes he can be apart of, for a community that means so much to him
"Beaumont hold a great place in my heart and it is a terrific place to grow up," Garfield said.
The developers will be meeting with Beaumont City Manager Kenneth Williams Tuesday to hit the ground running on this new potential hotel.