By Krystal Smalley
ksmalley@wbcowqel.com
With the toss of a shovelful of dirt, a dream of the Keller family and the City of Galion was manifested in an empty cornfield on Brandt Road Tuesday afternoon.
The city held a groundbreaking for the Sleep Inn Hotel, a $5.5 million project that would establish a 60-bed hotel at the corner of Ohio 598 and Brandt Road. The Keller family sold three acres under land contract to the developers, Choice Hotels International, for the construction of a new hotel.
The Keller family has owned 15 acres along that corner for decades with the hope that it could become something more.
“It’s exciting,” said David Keller on behalf of his family. “It’s a little bit difficult to believe because it’s been so long and you just keep thinking, ‘Well, someday when I’m gone.’ I know my dad thought that, and here he is today able to see it happening. That’s exciting.”
Mayor Tom O’Leary stated the project began several years ago when the city decided to do a feasibility study to determine, according to him, what the locals already knew: the city needed a hotel. As the idea of the project moved along, the city was put in touch with Steve Kleinknecht, Regional Director of Hotel Development at Choice Hotels and a Galion alumnus. Kleinknecht then connected the city with Winesburg Builders of Millersburg, Ohio, the contractor for the project.
O’Leary gave a lot of credit to the Keller family, also.
“Without their insight going back many years ago to when they acquired this with the vision of having it be developed, we wouldn’t be in this position that we are today,” O’Leary said. “I think everyone would agree that this is the ideal parcel for this kind of development north of Brandt Road.”
“It’s really an exciting day for Galion, it’s an exciting day for Crawford County,” said Gary Frankhouse, director of the Crawford County Partnership for Education and Economic Development. “We think of class reunions that can come back and stay. We think of Connections Weekend with alumni that fly in from Portland and Texas that invest in our kids and help out with career paths – they can stay here. We talk about wedding parties, families that are going to launch into new parts of their life that can stay here.
“It really becomes a relationship,” Frankhouse continued, “that we’re creating here on this ground. That’s really exciting.”
The target completion date for the hotel is fall of 2016.
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