A new, four-story hotel is planned in downtown Waukesha.
Members of the Common Council’s finance committee recently reviewed a request from Neenah-based Cobblestone Hotels, LLC, seeking $1 million in tax increment financing assistance to construct a free-standing 60-room hotel at the northwest corner of Wisconsin and Grand avenues.
The site is currently occupied by a vacant, former Associated Bank building and a city-owned parking lot. Taken together the parcels comprise just under 0.86 acres.
The roughly 37,000-square-foot, 60-room hotel would be worth about $9 million, according to developers, and would include a restaurant on the first floor. The project would create anywhere from 16 to 23 new jobs, according to city documents.
A proposed term sheet calls for Cobblestone to receive $1 million from the city once construction of the hotel is completed and $400,000 in additional incentives over the life of the TIF district as the project itself produces increment.
The project would occur in an existing TIF district that would have its boundary amended to include the project site.
The branch was closed by Associated Bank in late 2020 along with about a dozen other local branches across the state.
Waukesha-based Sky High Marketing had explored purchasing and expanding the building back in March 2022, but ultimately opted not to purse the project.
If constructed, the project would be the largest hotel to be constructed in Waukesha in decades. The Clarke Hotel, which sits above the Irish-themed Five Points Pub in an historic storefront building at 314 W. Main St. in downtown Waukesha, has 20 rooms.
Cobblestone Hotels has about 30 properties in Wisconsin, most of them located in smaller communities like Superior and Platteville. The closest hotels it has to Milwaukee are in Janesville and Hartford.
