If you stop by the Tourism Center in New Bedford today looking for a hotel, volunteer Frank Morse will point you to the Day’s Inn or the Seaport Inn, both outside of downtown and far from the city’s cultural attractions. But starting next summer Morse can point visitors to a new hotel five minutes down the road – the first hotel in downtown in almost four decades.
“It will help tourism a lot,” said Morse, who sees many visitors asking for a place to sleep that is within walking distance of the city’s attractions.
When complete, the 106-room Marriott Fairfield Inn and Suites Hotel and conference center will become the first downtown hotel since the New Bedford Hotel closed in 1969. And while other hotels dot the city’s outskirts, officials say a downtown hotel will help invigorate business in this historic New England whaling town.
“It’s one of the pieces missing from the economic-development puzzle – having a good hotel near the waterfront,” said Roy Nascimento, CEO of the New Bedford Chamber of Commerce.
New Bedford sits just over an hour’s drive from Hyannis, Mass., and along the Interstate 195 corridor. Richard Lafrance, whose Lafrance Hospitality Company is developing the hotel, said he hopes the inn will cater to those speeding along the highway that are intrigued by New Bedford’s attractions and decide to stop for the night.
“You can’t survive just on tourism but you can have a very strong tourism season,” Lafrance said. “There are tourists going down that 195 corridor and I think New Bedford is going to be a great destination.”
The city features extensive waterfront attractions, the New Bedford Art Museum, a University of Massachusetts Dartmouth satellite campus, a zoo and numerous shops and galleries. Flights and ferries depart regularly in the summer to Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard.
Local officials wooed Lafrance to the project after commissioning a study in 2006 that proclaimed a downtown hotel viable and important to the growth of the city. Mayor Scott Lang marshaled support for a hotel and arranged for vacant city land to be used as parking for the facility. His administration also helped relocate a pet-food manufacturing facility and started a campaign that highlighted the city’s creative economy.
Jenn Seco, a co-owner of Vetu Gift and Fine Consignment three blocks from the hotel site, said the hotel will help continue a renaissance of the downtown area and could draw people away from the Dartmouth Mall, which often steals the spotlight from downtown.
“I think if people spend the night they’ll take the time to venture out, not just pass right through,” Seco said.
Lasse Antonsen wants those hotel guests to venture to the biweekly AHA! Arts night he helps manage. He estimates that one-third to a half of the 1,500 to 2,500 people that attend the weekly nights already come from out of town. That number should only grow with a hotel in the downtown area, Antonsen said.
From the top floors of the five-story hotel guests can see the Atlantic Ocean and Martha’s Vineyard in the distance. Downstairs they will find an indoor pool and business center. Workers are also renovating the nearby Baker-Robinson Oil Works Building into a conference center, which will be connected to the hotel, scheduled to open in May 2010.
Lafrance Hospitality Company, based in Westport, Mass., already runs eight hotels in Massachusetts and Maine.
The $12.5 million New Bedford hotel has been in the works for years, and finally broke ground last August at a ceremony that attracted a cornucopia of officials, including U.S. Rep. Barney Frank. Those like Morse on the front lines of helping tourists also took a particular interest in the project.
“I think it’s going to be a great asset for us to have that,” Morse said. “It’s about time somebody built one.” •
