The newest hotel on the growing Benner PIke corridor near Bellefonte is now welcoming guests.
Tru by Hilton opened on Thursday at 143 Leahey Drive in Benner Township, atop the hill behind G.M. McCrossin.
The four-story, 98-room hotel includes a fitness center with cardio and strength equipment and a large lobby with games, a pool table, retail store and complimentary breakfast.
“Tru by Hilton is a specific design that’s geared towards a younger traveler, family travel, group sports team travel,” said Edward Tubbs, CEO of the hotel’s State College-based developer and operator, Hospitality Asset Management Company, which broke ground on the property in the summer of 2024. “It has a very large, interactive lobby with a lot of open seating where larger groups of folks can gather together, such as teams… so it’s geared towards that market segment.
“With the location of Penn State University and the amount of youth sports that come up here, collegiate sports that come up here, it seemed like the appropriate property to put into the market that isn’t here at the moment.”
Other features include king- and queen-size, connecting and pet-friendly rooms, streaming entertainment and electric vehicle charging stations.
The location was an appealing one for a hotel, Tubbs said, because of its proximity to Penn State and Interstate 99 and the development boom along Benner Pike, where a spate of new and planned businesses have joined others in what has become one of the fastest growing commercial areas of Centre County .
“Ironically enough, if you get in your car at the Tru and drive to [Beaver Stadium], it will take you, in most cases, less time than if you got in your car, say at the Days Inn on North Atherton with all the stoplights and coming down Park Avenue to the stadium,” Tubbs said. “So the ease of reaching the side of campus that has the athletic facilities was one factor. Interstate 99 was certainly a factor. Its proximity to I-80 is also a factor.
“And then the Benner Pike corridor in general and what’s growing out there in all of the office parks and the up-and-coming corridor itself, and now, of course, with the [Rockview] prison potentially having some acreage along Bener Pike that will be developed in the upcoming years, it definitely seemed like a very attractive location for us to put a hotel.”
It’s the second hotel to open on the Benner Pike corridor in the past five months.
The dual-branded Avid Hotel and Candlewood Suites by IHG, developed by SAI 21, recently opened less than a mile north at 132 Amberleigh Lane.
“There is certainly a lot happening in that area and Benner Pike as a whole and Bellefonte as a whole that warranted some new hotel rooms,” Tubbs said.
Hospitality Asset Management Company, which does business as Lion Country Lodging, also has two other Centre County hotels in the works.
Along another soon-to-be-booming commercial corridor, work is under way on East Trout Road near Shiloh Road for a Home2 Suites by Hilton, which will be the first phase of the the planned Shiloh Commercial Park. Tubbs said the company is currently eyeing a spring 2027 opening for that hotel.
“The winter was brutal up here, as you know, and we got very little work done for about 60 days there, which is unfortunate,” Tubbs said. “But the ground is about level to go. We should have footers going in here in the next two, three weeks, and about a 12-month build. So it’s looking like April of 2027 will be the opening.”
Timing for the other hotel is less certain.
HAMCO plans to build a 93-room boutique hotel as part of the long-anticipated Bellefonte Waterfront Project. Co-developer Tom Songer, who is leading the parking garage and condominiums component of the Waterfront Project, told Bellefonte Borough Council in December that he believed he had a financial plan ready for the oft-delayed development and hoped to break ground this spring.
“Once we have parking, we are ready to start the hotel project at a pretty quick pace,” Tubbs said. “Our plans are completed and ready to go with some fine tuning, but we are awaiting parking. We need parking space, whether it be a parking garage or surface parking. We need that aspect to move forward.”
Other hotel projects in varying stages of development by different owners around the county include a TownePlace Suites by Marriott at the corner of Bernel and Fox Hill roads in Patton Township, a Canopy by Hilton as part of the State College Town Centre project on South Allen Street and the Nittany Residence Club condo hotel at the corner of South Atherton Street and West Beaver Avenue in State College.
Fritz Smith, president and CEO of the Happy Valley Adventure Bureau, said in January that new hotels are vital to a Centre County tourism economy that continues to see record visitations and visitor spending and which, according to the Pennsylvania Tourism Office, is the second-fastest growing in the commonwealth.
“There is a lot of positive progress occurring throughout the county right now, and certainly in Bellefonte and along the Benner Pike corridor,” Smith said. “Additional lodging options complement this growth and are both reflective of and supportive of a strong visitor economy… There are a lot of hotels opening over the course of the next couple of years, so we at the Happy Valley Adventure Bureau and CBICC, it is our job to make sure that we are able to make sure that that investment is successful and we will. I promise you that we will be working hard to help fill these rooms here.”
