Yorktowne renovation could mean new apartments, demolition of 1957 addition

That’s what the project manager for the hotel’s owner, the York County Industrial Development Authority, said Tuesday morning at an update on downtown York City projects.

Once plans for the new hotel are finalized, construction should commence by late this year, and is eyed for a December 2018 completion, hotel project manager Blanda Nace said.

Likely plans also call for demolishing the rear, eastern side of the hotel, an addition that was made in 1957 to the original 1925 hotel, Nace said.

Plans also call for demolishing the gymnasium portion of the former Zion Lutheran Church, which adjoins the hotel and is owned by the IDA, and using the former church building for additional event space, Nace also said.

The project is now in the design phase. York County-based Kinsley Construction Inc., which last month was chosen as construction manager for the hotel renovation, is expected to name as many as 30 subcontractors for the project, Nace said.

“It’s an extremely aggressive schedule,” Nace said at the update on downtown York projects, held by the city improvement organization Downtown Inc at the Appell Center, the former Strand-Capitol Performing Arts Center.

The Yorktowne, on East Market Street, closed in November for what its owners have called a two-year, $20 million renovation project.

The IDA had bought the nearly century-old hotel for $1.8 million in late 2015.

The plans described by Nace are tentative, officials with the hotel project emphasized.

Final plans for the renovated Yorktowne have not been unveiled, while a variety of ideas, from condominiums and apartments to a new rooftop restaurant, have been proposed.

A public sale of items from the former hotel – “everything you can think of from a hotel,” as Nace put it – is planned on Saturday, May 27.

The first official renderings of plans for the new hotel are likely to be unveiled at a “LIQUIDation celebration” for the former hotel, planned for July 13 at York’s Valencia Ballroom, Nace also said.

Other possibilities for the renovated Yorktowne include an elevator on the outside south part of the hotel and an “entry plaza,” which would be a second hotel entrance, also on the south side.