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Holiday Inn hotel eyed for Downtown

By Sam Spatter
By Sam Spatter

PITTSBURGH — A Bridgeville developer wants to build a $9 million, 99-room Holiday Inn Downtown and hopes to begin construction early this summer.

The Forza Group is seeking approval for the eight-story hotel at 435 Fort Pitt Blvd. from the City Planning Commission, which it will brief on Tuesday, said spokesman Greg Erosenko.

"Hopefully, at the commission's next public meeting, on June 9, when the project comes up for action, it will be approved, and we plan to begin construction immediately," he said.

If construction begins early this summer, an opening would occur in spring 2015, he said. The project has been in the works for three years.

Two other hotel developments are also planned in the city by the Forza Group.

One on West Carson Street, on a site opposite the Duquesne Incline, is a 110-room Hampton Inn, said William Sittig Jr. of Sittig, Cortese & Wratcher LLC, legal counsel for the Forza Group. A third hotel, a 123-room Home2 by Hilton, is planned for the South Side, at the corner of East Carson and Sarah streets, he said.

"Once we build this hotel and two others planned in the city, plus with all the other hotels being constructed, Pittsburgh will have enough rooms to attract a major convention, such as the Democratic National Convention," Erosenko said.

More than a dozen hotels are either under construction or planned in the region, a large percentage of them Downtown or in the Strip District, North Shore and South Side.

Among those Downtown are Hotel Monaco in the former Reed Smith Building, a Drury Inn & Suites scheduled to be built in the former Federal Reserve Building on Grant Street, an Embassy Suites in the upper floors of the Oliver Building, and a 198-room Hilton Garden Inn, part of the Gardens at Market Square complex being built by Millcraft Investments.

At the end of 2013, Western Pennsylvania had 24,355 hotel rooms, a 10.2 percent increase since the end of 2007, according to Smith Travel Resources of Hendersonville, Tenn., which tracks hotel operations.

This article was written by Channel 11's news exchange partners at TribLIVE.

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