DeKalb Times

The DeKalb City Council discussed a potential zoning change that would permit the development of a new hotel during a meeting held on May 8.

During the meeting, city officials were presented with an ordinance requesting the rezoning of the property located at 902 Peace Road, which is the proposed site of a four-story, 121-room Marriott-branded hotel which will be broken down into 60 standard-stay Fairfield Inn rooms and 61 extended-stay rooms, This would make the hotel the only extended-stay location within a 40-mile radius. The developer, Pramit Patel, is a Northern Illinois University graduate and currently operates another hotel in the DeKalb area. He believes that the Marriott hotel would be a major draw for the NIU campus less than 10 minutes away and would bring an economic revitalization opportunity to the city.

The parcel is currently zoned as Heavy Industrial and sits between a gas station and an auto shop, so the Council proposed rezoning it to Planned Development Industrial (PDI). Patel requested two exceptions to their zoning codes on PDI, those being increasing maximum site coverage from 70% to 77% and decreasing the setback requirements by a few inches for the parking lines. DeKalb's Planning and Zoning Commission gave the proposal a unanimous recommendation for approval and sent it to the Council.

“The hotel brings not only a new option for visitors in our area, especially those who are Marriott loyal customers," said city manager Bill Nicklas. "It's going to increase our property tax and hotel-motel tax, which helps us on other tax bodies as well. It will also encourage more commercial development. The hotel is often a spur to that, along this important corridor, and there are opportunities there. There is acreage that can be developed for other commercial purposes.”

Alderman Scott McAdams was vocal in his excitement for the opportunity, saying that he liked that the city would be capturing tax revenue from DeKalb County citizens instead of watching them travel to other areas for accommodation and losing revenue. Mayor Cohen Barnes agreed, saying that "Marriott is always my go-to. Every property is just well-run quality products, so I can't be more excited."

The other aldermen were pleased with the well-written and easy-to-approve development plan and gave their unanimous approval to the project, waiving the second reading to speed the development along.