For the second time in three weeks, Westfield has announced a significant private development plan in the vicinity of Grand Park Sports Campus.
The Cambria Suites and Hotel will be located in the Grand Park Village development across 186th Street from the sports campus.
“It’s a huge day for us, we’re going to double the number of hotels in Westfield overnight,” Mayor Andy Cook said. “We’ve worked hard to create the positive conditions for the hospitality industry to grow in Westfield so it’s rewarding to see that our economic development strategy is paying off.”
Cook said development can be seen in the northwest quadrant of Westfield with a couple of fueling stations planned and being built and a number of brand new restaurants popping up.
“We had anticipated 500,000 visitors to Grand Park in its first year. As of last week we had topped 870,000 visits to this park in its very first year,” said Cook. “They need some place to stay. Right now we are utilizing hotels from all throughout Hamilton County, Indianapolis, Lebanon, Kokomo and Anderson. We’re very excited to announce our first hotel right here in Grand Park.”
The 110,000 square foot Cambria Suites and Hotel will feature 150 rooms, described as oversized suites with plenty of room to work and play. The hotel will feature 5,000 square feet of meeting and conference space. It is being developed as a joint venture of Ceres Enterprises LLC and Orlean Group LLC.
“The rooms are approximately 400 square feet with walk-in showers. We’ll have more two rooms than we can service,” said Davis Crisafi of Ceres Enterprises. “It will also be a nice hotel for local business. We love the vision Mayor Andy has and Henke Development Group.”
Cambria Suites has a hotel in Noblesville and plans for others to open in Washington, D.C., Chicago and New York.
“We’re very excited to come over here to Westfield,” Crisafi said. “We think this is one of the premier developments in the country when it comes to the youth sports industry. We can tell you the fame of Westfield goes well beyond Indianapolis. People in Cleveland talk about it all the time. Soccer players, baseball players want to come here to play in youth events. We think we have the right product to serve what you have here.”
The demand created by Grand Park along with the shops, restaurants and lifestyle amenities of the Grand Park Village development made it a very attractive location for Cambria.
“The vision and passion to bring something like this to the amateur sports realm is unbelievable,” said Cameron Orlean of Orlean Group, LLC. “It’s so exciting to see all the different development coming in and proposed development for the Grand Park Village area… We hope we can help house the players and their families, coaches when they come to Westfield.”
In addition to the already strong tournament attendance, Grand Park will now attract year-round sporting events. Private developers have already committed to build two indoor facilities: a $24 million soccer/lacrosse/football facility to open in 2015 and a $6 million basketball/volleyball facility.
“What we are doing here with city amenities is creating a very unique park that we hope in turn creates a very profitable business environment that the private sector wants to invest in. And that’s exactly what we are beginning to see here,” Cook said. “We do have a few restaurants and quite a few shops and entertainment venues saying ‘How do we get involved?”
