New Stanton Hampton Inn to celebrate grand opening

New Stanton’s first new hotel in about 20 years will host a ribbon-cutting ceremony Wednesday.

The 84-room Hampton Inn on Bair Boulevard opened in July but will officially mark the occasion with local officials and representatives from the Westmoreland County Chamber of Commerce at its 11 a.m. grand opening.

The hotel, owned by Grove City developer Stanton Hospitality, has been in the works since 2016.

Its construction coincided with PennDOT’s renovation of the New Stanton I-70 Interchange. The hotel is off one of the roundabouts created as part of that project.

The interchange construction has spurred development in the borough, and made building a hotel an appealing prospect, said Hampton Inn manager Heather Bianchi.

“(New Stanton) is a very busy, important hub,” she said.

Interstate 70 and the turnpike meet in the borough, which has long prided itself on the role it plays in the region’s highway system.

A new GetGo gas station opened recently. The borough’s Sheetz and Eat’n Park locations are undergoing major renovations.

Borough Manager Jeff McLaughlin said he hopes the Hampton Inn and other developments will lead to many more.

“Just the idea of another business in town, a quality hotel like that, some of the other hotels might have to keep up, so to speak,” he said. “It might raise the bar for improvements.”

New Stanton’s Hampton Inn looks unlike any other, according to Bianchi. The hotel has a more modern design, because it is a prototype of the planned next generation of Hampton Inns.

The borough also got a free street out of the deal. Stanton Hospitality built North Rachel Drive, at its own expense, to give customers a way to access the hillside hotel from the roundabout. The company is expected to turn over control of North Rachel Drive to the borough in the near future.

The new Hampton Inn comes during a period of national hotel industry growth.

About $32 billion was spent on building hotels, motels and resorts in 2018, more than double what was spent five years ago, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau.

More than 5,500 new hotel projects were in various stages of development in the United States at the end of 2018, according to real estate analysis firm Lodging Econometrics. That’s a 7% jump from 2017 and the seventh consecutive year of industry growth.

A Tru by Hilton hotel is in development on Route 30 in Hempfield.