Two projects stuck in development limbo for nearly a decade are finally seeing significant progress.
For developer JVD Enterprise, a new Holiday Inn Hotel & Suites near Winchester Road in Southeast Memphis is more than halfway to buildout and another boutique hotel planned for Downtown could get underway by the end of the year.
JVD President Vince Vaghela expects the six-story Holiday Inn to be finished by early next year.
“After we purchased the property and received approval for development, the economy collapsed in 2009 so we just sat on the project and waited on it,” he said. “When the economy started picking up, we had a couple of other projects that we were working on, so we finished them up and finally got into this one.”
The full-service Holiday Inn will include 129 rooms, along with more than 4,500 square feet of meeting facilities and banquet space, a full-service restaurant and bar.
Vaghela expects his investment in the Southwind/Germantown market to pay off for a number of reasons.
“The (Interstate) 385 is now connected to I-40, so we are expecting a lot of transient traffic,” said Vaghela. “And we will be the only full-service property in this area with a large banquet facility that will hold 250 to 270 people.”
Development on the 3.5-acre parcel got underway about one year ago, and Jiji Construction is the general contractor.
“We’re hoping to cover up the building soon and work inside for the next five to six months,” said Vaghela, who has worked in development for the past 29 years.
JVD owns four hotel properties in Northern Mississippi, including in Batesville and Greneda. The company’s new Holiday Inn will be its first project built in Memphis, although JVD did previously own the Days Inn & Suites in Collierville. They sold it in 2012.
The company is looking to do more hotel projects in the Memphis area once work on the Holiday Inn wraps up, including another project stalled since the late 2000s.
JVD owns the former Tenoke Building Downtown on B.B. King Boulevard at Jefferson Avenue that it plans to develop into a 12-story high-end boutique hotel.
The 135,000-square-foot building, which JVD bought before the Great Recession and then held onto for a number of years, will be restored and partially demolished.
Work could get underway on the Downtown project before the end of the year.
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