Developers Hope to Break Ground Next Spring on Bellefonte Waterfront Hotel

Borough officials recently met with the developers of the much-anticipated Bellefonte Waterfront project that includes a boutique hotel, parking garage and condominiums and came back with some good news at the June 21 council meeting.

“They hope to break ground next spring,” council President Joanne Tosti-Vasey said.

Developers Tom Songer and Ed Olsen told the borough they plan to start with the hotel and parking garage as they originally had intended, with some redesigns to both buildings, Tosti-Vasey said.

“The major revisions will be done with the garage,” she said, adding that developers are still working on the redesign and plan to send out requests for new bids in the meantime.

The group managing the project first announced its plans in 2018 and officially closed on the former Bush House property in December 2019.

The original vision for the property, which is still posted on Songer’s Torron Group website, planned for a five-story boutique hotel with approximately 80 guest rooms, along with meeting and banquet rooms and a restaurant. The hotel is to be constructed at High and Dunlap streets and include a promenade along Spring Creek that will serve as a pedestrian walkway and gathering space.

Plans called for a 300-space parking structure next to the hotel. Hotel room guests and visitors would be able to walk from the parking garage into the hotel via a covered bridge. The first floor of the garage would contain approximately 20,000 square feet of commercial and retail space on the first floor of the garage.

A five-story building next to Lamb Street would have 14,700 square feet of offices and retail on the first floor and four floors of one- and two-bedroom condominium apartments.

This story appears in the June 24-30 edition of The Centre County Gazette.