News

City to again pitch Dogwood lot for hotel

By Bill Moss, Published: December 17, 2025

The city of Hendersonville is taking another shot at recruiting a developer to build a hotel on the Dogwood parking lot on Fifth Avenue a block from Main Street.

The last time it tried, the city landed a developer and signed an agreement, only to have the project fizzle at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic in March 2020. With the pandemic behind them and a parking deck available, city administrators and the council are in a better position. The city council on Dec. 4 OK’d plans to send out a request for proposals this week.

The city began negotiating with developers for downtown sites that it owned as far back as 2016, when it issued RFPs for both the Dogwood site and the Grey Hosiery Mill. The city reached an agreement that allowed investor Belmont Sayer take advantage of historic property tax credits to renovate the 1915 factory into apartments.

“We got fully repaid plus $50,000,” City Manager John Connet said of the Grey Mill project.

Deputy City Manager Brian Pahle guided the council through the recent history of city-driven downtown development proposals.

A 2016 RFP failed to gain traction.

“In 2019 we still saw the need for downtown hotel so we released a new RFP for a hotel on the Dogwood site, in conjunction with our budding discussions about a downtown parking deck,” Pahle said.

The city acquired land on Fifth Avenue West at Church Street and began construction on the deck, which opened in 2023.

“At the start of 2020 we engaged Blue Star Hospitality for a Spring Hill Suites on the Dogwood site and then we all remember what happened a couple months later: Covid occurred, and the city and Blue Star unwound the agreement based on the feasibility of that project moving forward,” Pahle said.

The next year, the city council granted a rezoning for a boutique hotel called the Courthouse Inn behind the Historic Courthouse.

“And we approved plans for the Cedars Fairmont that is moving forward as well,” Pahle said. “The Courthouse Inn has not moved forward, and we have not seen any sort of motion on that.”

Connet said in an interview Monday that the latest the city has heard from the Cedars developer is that construction “should restart after the first of the year.” One of the holdups — a building height issue with the second wing — has been resolved, Connet said, and the developer has an active zoning permit.

“At this point,” Pahle told the council, “based on no motion on the Courthouse Inn and really the Cedars Fairmont being more of a condominium project with options for lockout (hotel) rooms, we still feel that there is a need for a downtown hotel.”

‘We think we’re in a better position now’

Connet said this week that the timing is better now than it was five years ago. “We have had inquiries from developers who were looking for a site around the downtown,” he said. “We’ve got this Dogwood lot. An RFP also gives us control. We could to a public-private partnership and have more say in the appearance, how it plays with our Main Street.”

The property was appraised this month at $4,335,000. State law bars the city from giving the land to a developer but can sell it and negotiate building conditions under a process guided by the state general statutes.

Parking was a question mark when the city entertained the idea of a Dogwood site hotel six years ago. Today, the parking garage enhances the viability.

“We think we’re in a better position now,” Connet said. “The parking deck is functioning, it’s a 257-slot deck, clearly there’s capacity in the deck.” The surplus capacity could be used in negotiations with a potential hotelier. “We cannot give the spaces away but we can develop a lease for the hotel.”

Both Connet and Pahle point out that development of the Dogwood lot is identified as a priority in the city’s GenH land-use plan.

“The Downtown Master Plan guidance identifies the site as the most suitable for commercial development,” Pahle told the council. “It also identifies it as underdeveloped and identifies mixed-use infill on the ‘downtown edge master plan’ for that site.”

Tax district could expand

As part of the development plan, the city staff is recommending that the council expand the city’s municipal taxing district, taking in the Dogwood site, the Cedars Fairmont, the Waverly Inn and Charleston Inn on North Main Street.

The “Downtown Edge Hospitality district would be more of an inns and hotels area that we would then try to support through enhanced municipal services” such as “infrastructure improvements, including streetscapes, water, sewer infrastructure and the like.”

Connet said city staffers have not yet engaged the property owners in the taxing district proposal; the expansion would add a 21-cent/$100 valuation tax to the downtown edge real estate. Similar to an annexation, the tax district expansion would require public hearings. The city’s preliminary analysis projected that the tax district expansion could generate around $400,000 a year in revenue.

With the council’s authorization, the staff was scheduled to send out the RFP on Monday, Dec. 15, giving developers a deadline of Feb. 15 to respond.  Staff review would start the next day Feb. 16, followed by council review and an up or down vote.

“At any point, you can withdraw the RFP or decide to not move forward,” Connet said. “But we just want to do it publicly and give you opportunity for questions or any change in direction.”

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