4-Story Hotel on Main Street and 5th Approved

Plans for a new hotel at 507 W. Main Street have been provisionally approved by the city. The lot has been vacant since 2017 when the abandoned City Center Motor Inn and Black Angus restaurant were demolished.

According to documents submitted to the city, the hotel will be 4 stories and 91,556 sq.ft. There will be retail space on the ground level as well as a ground level pool. Parking for the hotel will be to the north of the building along West Mendenhall. 

According to the plans, the hotel will be a Hampton Inn & Suites. The developers are listed as Bozeman Exchange Associates, LLC / Bennett Hospitality out of Charleston, South Carolina.

The property at 507 W. Main Street was sold in 2015. It was listed at $2,900,000 and included the abandoned City Center Motor Inn building and a building on the corner of 7^th and Mendenhall that was last the Café International restaurant but has been sitting empty for years. The developers of the hotel own 4 additional lots along W. Mendenhall that are not included in the site plan for the hotel, including the lot where the old Café International building stands. 

City documents detailed the history of this block, “The site has been vacant since 2017 when the existing motel was demolished. This motel was built in 1959. Prior to that, the block contained multiple residences that date back to 1904. This area served as a residential neighborhood until the 1950s when houses between Main and Mendenhall started to be demolished to accommodate auto oriented businesses such as gas stations and a motel. The character of this block shifted from residential to commercial except for a few of the original houses that remain that have been turned into commercial businesses.”

Public comments were received on this project, most of which were concerns about a 100-year-old ponderosa pine tree on site. Unfortunately, grading done on the site due to the construction of the original motel has resulted in damage to the tree’s roots over time. The tree has been determined to be unstable and represents a significant safety concern. The city has proposed the tree's removal, and the developer is proposing to mill the tree and potentially incorporate it into the building.

As we were writing this post, we took a little trip down memory lane thanks to Google Street View. Scroll to the bottom of this page for some photos of the old City Center Inn, Black Angus, and Café International building. 

This is not the only major development happening in this area of downtown Bozeman, several new developments have been proposed in the Midtown area, the Freestone on Main building is currently under construction on the lot just east of this development, where Bamboo Garden used to be. You can learn more about Freestone on Main here.

I guess this means we have to give up any hope we had left of Café International coming back. That food was some of the best in Bozeman back in the day. If you'd like to stay in the loop with local information like this, sign up for our Local Info newsletter.