Eat. Drink.
Sleep., a hotel chain that owns several popular hotels in the San Diego area has
plans to open their first northern California hotel in the writer's hometown of
Placerville. They plan on calling this new hotel the Mackinaw Hotel, which will
be located at 3001 Jacquier Road, the site of an abandoned hotel project which
was originally going to be the Holiday Inn Express, but stopped construction
when the economy tanked.
This fact
has me cautiously optimistic about this project. I have heard a few hotel
proposals for this area planned, and then they mysteriously dropped off the
face of the earth. Projects, such as the
Holiday Inn Express at this site, the Hilton Garden Inn across the freeway from
this project, the SpringHill Suites near In-N-Out Burger, and most recently the
Hampton Inn and Suites at this exact spot. I know in Placerville that many
projects have been talked about, such as the Crossings at El Dorado, since the
1990s and they are now leveling the ground on the project to build things 30
years later. The project was originally going to feature Mervyn's, a department
store that went under during the 2008 recession, then after the recession it
was changed so it would feature more of the modern big box stores, and then it
was changed to become more of a community center after the Kmart space became
available for lease and retailers looked to Prospector's Plaza for their new
stores. This has been the case in the hotel industry as the economy has risen
to high levels and then tanked in the recession during the long and drawn out
process of planning, approving, and then constructing these hotels.
Things that
would have me believe this project will be built is that the Placerville
Planning Commission has unanimously approved this project. They are allowed to
start construction on this new hotel. I know there are new projects which have
been approved and developed in a fairly quick manner, such as the new Target,
the El Dorado Community Clinic's new building, and the Goodwill and Walgreens
on Missouri Flat Road. The hotel developers have a set date at when it will
likely be built, 2023, which can be subject to change. But it is a start. If
built, this will be the first hotel built in Placerville since 1988, when the
Best Western on Missouri Flat Road was built.
This hotel
is certainly needed for this area, for the visitors visiting Apple Hill who
want to stay in the area, for fire evacuees during the fires (which we hope
don't happen too often), for people who can't go home because of the heavy snow
up the hill, and for people who need a place to stay when visiting their
family. The hotel could help bolster the
Western slope of El Dorado County's image of being a tourist destination people
want to visit, which could be a good thing or a bad thing. It could be a
downside in that if Placerville grew too much, it might lose some of the charm
the rural nature brings to the town and become more like a larger city which
many don't want to see, and it may cause the area to become crowded with
tourists. But, becoming crowded with tourists may also be a good thing because
it brings much needed money and jobs to the area. So I think there needs to be
a balance with development, which I believe the city is recognizing with the
approval of this hotel making sure it compliments with the history and
landscape in the area. But I believe the people of the county with the slow
process of developing areas will help preserve the area's rural nature for
years to come, the reason many people come visit the Apple Hill area of
Placerville. And I believe that if we have more hotels for these visitors, many
people will appreciate this area's beauty and will strengthen the effort to
preserve the area's rural nature.
Most of all,
I believe it will entice more people to stay in the area when they visit instead
of staying in Folsom or South Lake Tahoe for the night after they visit, bringing
more tax dollars to the area, and bolstering the economy of the area helping
the small businesses which could use more business to survive and thrive.
For God so
loved the world that He gave His one and only Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal
life.
John 3:16
Thank you
for reading my blogpost and God bless!!
