A brand new hotel has plans to open in the city of Placerville!!

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!!