The new Cobblestone Hotel & Suites in Urbana officially welcomed its first guests on Friday, June 12th!
Reservations are now available online at https://www.staycobblestone.com/oh/urbana/

By Christopher Selmek, Urbana Daily Citizen
​The three-story, 54-room Cobblestone Hotel under construction at 170 state Route 55, Urbana, is on budget and on schedule to be completed by mid-May 2020, according to Urbana Hotel LLC managing member Terry Howell. The framing crew lost 12 days of work due to weather, allowed under the construction schedule. Roofers were expected to begin placing tile on Monday.

“The schedule had allowances for weather, and they’ve used up all those allowances to date,” Howell said Friday, Dec. 27. “I would personally like to have seen it a week ahead of schedule, but we’ve had rain come at inopportune times. On Monday the shingle people will come in and they’ll start putting the soffit on and the shingles on.”

Howell said that the framing crew was contracted from Florida by BriMark Builders, that the crew is the number one framing crew for BriMark and that this is the 15th hotel they have built.

“Any construction project usually has a little impediment here or a miscommunication there. That’s kind of normal, but there’s not been very much of that,” he said. “There’s always some of that on any project, but there hadn’t been very much of that on this one. It’s going very smoothly.”

Plumbers and HVAC contractors are at work inside the structure. The concrete pool is built and just needs a liner. Howell said there are as many as 10-15 people working on site during any given day depending on what they are trying to accomplish that day.

“There’s a schedule where you have different trades that have to come together to fit,” Howell said. “The rooms are all laid out and numbered already on the inside. They’re laid out in a rough frame, and there’s an electrical map on each room so electricians know where to run wires and so on. It has been sequenced appropriately and is right on schedule and on budget. Everything is going fairly smooth.”

Howell added that the people working on the entrance will install awning, and then signage will go on the cupola. The “mountain of mud” currently surrounding the building will be transformed into a parking lot big enough to park buses beside the building within the coming months.

“I would have no problem staying here,” he said. “I live just three miles from here so I doubt if I ever will spend the night here, but all the rooms have character. We’ve got like six different styles of rooms … and they have varying amenities that they offer, so they’re not all the same. We are really excited.”

Christopher Selmek can be reached at 937-508-2304

By Jenna Lawson, Springfield News-Sun Staff Writer
The last bit of needed funding has been secured to push forward the ‘Legacy Place’ senior housing project in Urbana.

Sourcing all of the funding has been a tedious multi-year task undertaken by several different parties — but soon residents will start to see the fruits of labor.

“This is going to be a reality,” said Champaign Economic Development Director Marcia Bailey. “It’s not just sketches on a piece of paper. It’s going to be a reality.”

In August, the developers of the project — Flaherty & Collins Properties — applied for a grant through the Federal Home Loan Bank of Cincinnati with the help of community partners.

The project, called Legacy Place, would create 51 housing units available to residents 55 and older.

“We are super excited, this was a big hurdle and achieving this credit is a really exciting achievement,” said Marica Bailey, Director of the Champaign Economic Partnership. “We are ready to move forward with this process.”

MORE: Plan might find new use for Douglas Hotel, longtime Urbana eyesore

While funding for the project has been secured, Bailey said, the project is still a work in progress.

“There is no start time,” Bailey said. “This project is still in the making, but this is a big step in the making.”

The Ohio Historic Preservation Tax Credit is administered in partnership with the Ohio History Connection’s State Historic Preservation office and the Ohio Development Services Agency. The credit is awarded to, “assist private developers in rehabilitating historic buildings in downtown and neighborhoods.”

“Partnering with communities and developers across Ohio, we’re preserving historic sites that make Ohio unique,” Lydia Mihalik, director of the Ohio Development Services Agency, said in a news release. “We’re creating new opportunities for small businesses and housing.”

The Legacy Place project is just one of 22 projects awarded the tax credit. In total, the Ohio Department of Services Agency awarded more than $28 million for the rehabilition of 49 historic buildings, according to the ODSA.

Under the Legacy Place project, the city of Urbana has agreed to take ownership of the two elementary school buildings and transfer them to the Champaign Economic Partnership. The CEP will then transfer the two buildings to Flaherty and Collins.

The next step in the Legacy Place project since receiving the credit, will be to work on transferring and finalizing property agreements, Bailey said.

“We are going to be meeting up and working through the fine details of the project and finalizing some of the purchasing agreements and stuff like that in the coming months,” Bailey said.

The former Douglas Hotel is privately owned by John Doss, who plans to work out a separate agreement with the company.
Doss said previously that he purchased the Douglas with plans to eventually restore it, although it’s been a slow process to track down funding and find a suitable project.

The former hotel has been vacant for more than a decade and city officials have said in the past they believe the building is an eyesore downtown. Turning the site into senior housing will encourage more residents to live downtown and create new opportunities for retailers, Bailey said.

“This is going to have a tremendous impact and the making of this has been an incredible effort,” Bailey said.