Downtown hotel could get a lot bigger depending on land swap, financial markets
The state of the economy has a lot of people rethinking expenditures, and billionaire Phil Ruffin Sr. is one of them.
Ruffin has been working on plans to add another 100 rooms to his Hyatt Regency Wichita downtown, but he’s now putting them on a temporary hold.
“We’re contemplating it right now,” he said. “Business has to pick up a little bit before we go forward with it. . . . We may be entering into a recession. In fact, some say we are in a recession.”
Ruffin said the conventional thinking in the hotel world is that if a property consistently has occupancy rates of 80% or more, “You think you might be passing some business up.”
The Hyatt’s occupancy rate has been even higher than that.
The new rooms would be attached to the hotel on its northwest corner.
The catch is that part of that is city property.
“We’re trying to negotiate some ground that the city has,” Ruffin said. “It involves a land swap.”
It’s a complicated land swap involving land Ruffin owns by the Epic Center that he said the county wants.
So how could there be a land swap when it is two different government entities involved?
“That’s the problem,” Ruffin said.
“We’d like to accommodate the county,” he said. “You know, it’s very political, and I don’t know that it’s going to happen.”
Neither the city nor the county had immediate comments on Ruffin’s plans or the potential land swaps.
Via text, city spokeswoman Megan Lovely shared a general statement on that area along the Arkansas River.
“We are certainly excited to have ongoing discussions around that location and work to find ways to activate the river, however, due to these ongoing discussions, we are not quite ready to provide further details at this time.”
Even if the land swaps are successful, there’s still the state of the financial world to consider.
“We’re waiting to see what happens here,” Ruffin said.
“You know, the financial market’s cratering. . . . If things get better, we may pull the trigger.”