A Hyatt Regency Hotel is planned to be built adjacent to and attach to Stonebriar Centre. Frisco City Council approved an agreement to purchase the hotel’s conference center for $10.5 million.[/caption]

A Hyatt Regency Hotel has plans to come to Frisco’s Stonebriar Centre.

Frisco City Council approved an agreement April 5 to purchase the hotel’s conference center for $10.5 million.

The Frisco Economic Development Corp. board still has to vote on a performance agreement for the hotel in which the FEDC would contribute $3 million toward the cost of the hotel’s infrastructure. The Frisco Community Development Corp. also has to vote on the agreement to potentially provide $3 million if the project does not qualify for all of the FEDC funding.

City agreement and hotel plans

The Hyatt is planned to have 15 stories and 295 rooms. It is planned to be built between Nordstrom and Dillard’s and attach to the mall on the ground floor.

The hotel will also feature a parking garage with at least 800 parking spaces. City Council also approved a separate agreement during the April 5 meeting to fund up to $15 million for the cost of the parking garage.

Plans for the Hyatt also include a 3,000-square-foot space that the city will lease for $1 per year for 20 years for the development of a city library.

“Make no mistake, this is a huge day for Frisco,” Council Member Scott Johnson said. “This is a big project. It’s a game changer for Frisco.”

The hotel’s conference center is expected to be at least 50,000 square feet and will include a grand ballroom, a junior ballroom and additional breakout spaces.

The city plans to purchase the conference center upon the hotel’s completion. The agreement specifies that the hotel must be completed within 2 1/2 years from the start of construction.

Assistant City Manager Ron Patterson echoed some of the council members who said this hotel brings an opportunity to reinvest in a significant part of Frisco.

“It really is a big benefit because it allows us to be able to refresh there at Stonebriar,” Patterson said. “It is very important, as everybody knows, to the community, and we feel like this would be a great asset to be able to bring this to that location.”

City-owned conference centers

The Hyatt’s conference center is not the first hotel conference center that the city has agreed to purchase.

Last August, City Council approved an agreement to buy Omni Hotel’s 43,000-square-foot conference center attached to the Ford Center at The Star for $17.5 million. The city also owns Embassy Suites’ 90,000-square-foot convention center.

In a previous story, Assistant City Manager Ron Patterson said the city uses Embassy Suites’ convention center for events. The city will do the same with Omni’s conference center, he said.

“This is a big project. It’s a game changer for Frisco.”

—Scott Johnson, Frisco City Council member

“Just like we do at the Embassy, when the city has a need to use [the conference center] for something, we [will] go directly to them and we [will] book just like we do with any other event,” he said. “But then we just have the right to use it. We’re not paying for that use.”

Much like the purchase agreements for Embassy Suites and the Omni, Moon Hotel Stonebriar Ltd., the developer of the Hyatt, would be leasing the conference center back from the city with the option to buy the center back in the future.

Hotels on the way

The Hyatt is one of several hotels announced recently that are planned to come to Frisco.

Another Hyatt hotel, Hyatt House Hotel, opened in March at the northwest corner of Parkwood Boulevard and Gaylord Parkway. The extended-stay hotel features 132 rooms.

A Drury Inn & Suites is under construction at the southeast corner of Dallas and Gaylord parkways. It is expected to open in 2017.

Two more hotels are also planned for the Frisco Fresh Market development in downtown Frisco. Holiday Inn Express and Candlewood Suites are both expected to open in 2017.

In Wade Park, Hotel Zaza and a Langham Hotel have committed to the mixed-use development. Hotel Zaza is scheduled to open in 2017, and the Langham Hotel is set to open in 2018.