Hotel developer planning project near Hamilton Town Center

A hotel developer based in Columbus, Indiana, is working on plans to build a Holiday Inn Express Hotel & Suites near Hamilton Town Center in Noblesville.

Sprague Co. is proposing a 16,500-square-foot hotel with about 120 rooms at 13625 Tegler Drive, across from the popular lifestyle mall at Interstate 69’s Exit 210.

The site also is a less than a mile from Klipsch Music Center and two hospitals—St. Vincent Fishers and IU Health Saxony—and is located in the heart of Noblesville’s Corporate Campus.

Sprague operates 10 other hotels in Indiana, including the Hampton Inn & Suites off 116th Street in Fishers. It also has properties in Greenwood, Seymour, Nashville and Columbus/Edinburgh.

The Noblesville location is about 18 miles from Westfield’s Grand Park Sports Campus, the youth-sports megaplex that opened this year, filling hotels in Hamilton County and beyond.

As IBJ reported in July, hotel occupancy was up 9 percent in the first half of 2014. Grand Park was a factor, along with an improving economy that delivered more corporate and leisure travelers.

Grand Park demand is easier to quantify, since teams participating in events are required to book their stays through a central housing bureau. In April, about 10 percent of the 64,000-plus room nights sold in Hamilton County came from Grand Park, according to data from Hamilton County Tourism.

Westfield built Grand Park as an economic development play, hoping to attract businesses that want a piece of the lucrative youth-sports market. Local officials expect hotels, restaurants and other retail to pop up nearby.

In fact, Westfield officials are slated to join “private investors” at a news conference near Grand Park this morning, presumably to announce an off-the-field development—likely a hotel or significant retail tenant for the commercially-focused Grand Park Village.