The town of Hennessey soon will be home to a new hotel, with construction of a Sleep Inn & Suites scheduled to begin within the month.
Rocco Loverro, public relations manager for Choice Hotels International, said plans are in place to build a three-story, 50-room Sleep Inn & Suites in Hennessey, under the franchise ownership of Saqib Anwar, of Enid.
Anwar said he and his brother, Mansoor Anwar, plan to manage the property themselves as owner/operators.
Anwar said he and his brother were motivated to build a hotel in Hennessey because the market was wide open.
“There was a need for a hotel in Hennessey, and people wanted a nice facility there,” Anwar said. “There is no hotel in Hennessey, and I thought, ‘Let’s build one there.’”
Anwar said the new 50-room hotel will feature indoor corridor access, a breakfast area, conference room and separate banquet hall.
Anwar said he expects construction to begin in the next “couple of weeks,” and the hotel should be open for business in March or April 2013.
KT Construction and Development, of Hennessey, has been contracted to build the new hotel at an estimated project cost of $2.5 million.
KT Construction owner Kevin Fuksa said he has worked in residential and commercial property development, but this will be his first hotel construction project.
The new hotel will be built on almost two acres of land south of Oklahoma 51 on the west side of U.S. 81, at 522 N. Main.
Fuksa said the new hotel, when complete, will be “a great deal” for the town of Hennessey.
“We’ve needed this for a long time, and it’s going to be very positive,” Fuksa said.
Hennessey town administrator Tiffany Tillman shared that optimistic outlook for the hotel’s possible effects on the town.
“It’s going to benefit us dramatically,” Tillman said. “We’ve looked at a lot of different things we’d like to do in our town. But, one thing that always comes up is, you want to have these events but what are you going to do with the people when they come?”
She said the town currently has only a small motel with about five rooms, and the new hotel will help the town attract events, and keep people in town overnight.
“We have several events that go on in our town, and we’ll be able to keep those people here instead of having them drive to Enid to stay at night,” Tillman said. “This will help us keep our sales tax dollars here, it should increase our revenue and I look for more events to happen here as well.”
Sleep Inn & Suites is one of 11 lodging brand names franchised by Choice Hotels International. Other franchise lines include Comfort Inn, Quality, Clarion, Cambria Suites and EconoLodge.
The new hotel in Hennessey will be the 10th Sleep Inn & Suites location in Oklahoma, and one of more than 75 Choice Hotel properties in the state.
Choice Hotels International is franchisor to more than 5,000 hotels in the United States and more than 6,000 worldwide.
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