The Columbia Tech Center will soon have more residents and more overnight visitors following completion this summer of two four-story buildings rising at Southeast Mill Plain Boulevard and 177th Avenue.
The side-by-side buildings, now in late construction phases, are the TownePlace Suites, a Marriott-branded extended-stay hotel that will have 115 guest rooms, and the Parkside Lofts, a loft-style apartment building with 91 units that will rent from $975 to $1,200 per month. The studio and one-bedroom apartments posted on a website for pre-leasing, all on the fourth floor, range in size from 446 to 640 square feet.
The projects are one more step in the ongoing buildout of the Columbia Tech Center site by PacTrust, master developer of the approximately 400-acre business and commercial hub in east Vancouver. The tech center now includes 2.7 million square feet of retail, office and residential space.
Both of the new projects are scheduled for completion this summer, but so far neither has a firm completion date, said Benjamin Chessar, a PacTrust asset management vice president.
The TownePlace Suites is accepting reservations for July 27 or later, although the hotel could open before that date, said Alison Hite, the hotel’s general manager.
The Parkside Lofts, overlooking the Columbia Tech Center Park and Amphitheater, are “what you’d get in an urban setting but on a park,” said Chessar. The views of the mountains and park are spectacular, and the Tech Center is served by walking trails that make for easy access by foot around the community, he said. The project has a bike locker and repair area, ample vehicle parking, a community room and space for outdoor activities.
Chessar predicted that the units would appeal both to younger people and to older people wanting to downsize and enjoy community living.
The TownePlace hotel arrives at a time when extended-stay hotels — those with amenities and price structures designed to attract guests staying five or more days — are becoming a strong segment of the larger hotel market. While there are no local occupancy statistics that break out extended-stay hotels separately, their occupancy rate nationally in 2014 was 74.8 percent, compared to 64.4 percent for all hotels, according to industry source Smith Travel Research. Clark County’s overall occupancy rate for the first quarter of 2015 was 63.3 percent.
Other extended-stay hotels in Clark County include the Residence Inn and Springhill Suites, both also owned by Mariott, the Homewood Inn, Extended Stay America and Skybridge Suites. The Candlewood Suites, with 83 rooms, is under construction on 192nd Avenue and 20th Street and is set to open this fall.
