Site plans for Grapevine's Gaylord Texan Resort and Convention Center $120 million expansion were approved at the April 19 joint Grapevine City Council and Planning and Zoning Commission meeting. Plans include the construction of a nine-story guest tower comprising 303 rooms and 90,500-square-foot ballroom and conference center space, which will be constructed in an area between the existing north parking garage and the hotel. The new tower is currently being utilized as a valet parking lot that contains 210 parking spaces that will be eliminated once construction begins on the expansion project. When the plans were submitted some P&Z members had concerns about the design of the new portion being too modern and "not Texas enough." "Obviously they did a good job when they planned this to just be able to plop this right in and swap it with the parking," P&Z member Jimmy Fechter said. "When I have friends that come to town and they want to go see the Gaylord we go over there and they get the feel of Texas and everything looks a lot like Texas. To me this thing seems like it wants to be in downtown Chicago and it doesn't seem to me like it has that feel." Total guest rooms available will increase from 1,511 to 1,814 and total available meeting space on the property will increase from 310,303 square feet to 400,803 square feet. Gaylord officials said once the expansion is complete, Gaylord Texan will become the second largest convention center hotel not attached to a casino in the United States as measured by total self-contained exhibit and meeting space. The project’s additional hotel rooms and accompanying carpeted meeting space has a preliminary total cost per key of $383,000 and will be funded with cash on hand and borrowings under the company’s revolving credit facility. In addition, the city of Grapevine has agreed to rebate $1 million of the hotel’s rooms tax annually for a 10-year period upon the completion of the expansion, for a total of $10 million in city incentives.