Conneaut seeks proposals for new Lakeview Park facility

CONNEAUT — The city is on the lookout for potential hotel developers.

At Monday night’s council meeting, Conneaut City Council approved a resolution allowing City Manager Jim Hockaday to advertise a request for proposals for a potential hotel at Lakeview Park.

The hotel, mentioned in Conneaut’s comprehensive plan, would occupy the lot that currently houses Conneaut’s Lakeview Park. The lot includes the former Lakeview Trailer Park.  

Currently, there is a baseball diamond at Lakeview Park, to the east of the former trailer park.

“Only really about a third of that property is actual green space usable by the public,” Hockaday said.

Lakeview Trailer Park closed at the end of 2018, with occupants having until April of this year to fully vacate the premises, according to Planning Commission meeting minutes from 2018. By May 2018, six of the trailer park’s 13 residents had declined to renew their leases and moved their trailers out of the park.

The city’s comprehensive plans calls for a hotel in the harbor area.

“The city has been exploring development opportunities, including a recent hotel feasibility study and development concepts prepared by the Cleveland Urban Design Center,” according to the plan.

“The anticipation is to make this a seamless part of the waterfront that the public can come visit, enjoy, but actually have a place to stay at the end of the day,” Hockaday said.

Many of the high end hotels in the area are at 95 to 100 percent occupancy on a year-round basis, he said.

“We’ve done extensive surveys with a lot of our manufacturers in the area, and what their needs were for just putting up visiting middle management,” Hockaday said. “There were several (companies) that had significant needs for lodging or conference space because they don’t have conference rooms on the manufacturing floor.”

The hotel feasibility analysis study “indicated very strongly that there is an unmet demand here,” he said. One manufacturer had members of middle management sleeping in area hotels 200 nights per year.

“Go ask the city of Ashtabula what they think of their (hotel),” Hockaday said.

The more than 26-room River Bend Hotel in Ashtabula will break ground later this month. The hotel, the first hotel to be built in Ashtabula since 1920, will be on Goodwill Boulevard in Ashtabula Harbor and is to open in 2020.

“It’s something to be proud of,” Hockaday said.

Conneaut will be sensitive to viewsheds — what is visible from a particular location — and making sure the hotel is acceptable and sustainable, he said.

“There isn’t any place for people to stay near the lake, unless they can afford to rent cottages or condos or townhouses,” City Council President Debbie Newcomb said. “It’s just a natural area. We’ve got a beautiful township park, with public access. We have a marina and public dock with a lot of access, and I think this would be a really improved area that would help attract more people to the lakefront.”

Newcomb has talked to local organizations about historical trolley tours as well, she said.

“It was the single highest supported project in our comprehensive plan, which is why the city’s put such a priority on it,” Hockaday said. “I think it’s a really great project, and honestly, I don’t think there’s any one project that can be more transformative for the city or the waterfront than that one. ... It’s a really big deal.”