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Hotel plans will continue despite death By Buffy Pollock CENTRAL POINT � Plans for a second hotel at the Interstate 5 interchange will forge ahead despite the death of the landowner on Tuesday. The City Council Thursday approved site plans for a four-story, 42,000-square-foot Comfort Suites hotel and restaurant near the intersection of South Peninger Road and LaRue Drive. The property was owned by Sunriver resident William Cornitius, who died Tuesday morning in a single-vehicle crash on Highway 62 in Prospect. He was traveling to Central Point to take care of some "last-minute lease issues with his lawyer," said Daniel Parks, investor and project architect. Cornitius, 80, recently signed a 50-year lease with private investors building the 109-room hotel complex. Parks said Cornitius had arranged for lease payments to be paid into a family trust account and had completed necessary paperwork several months ago. "Everything�s intact," Parks said. "We�ll push ahead." Parks said that investors hope to begin construction in April and complete the project in about a year. Once completed, the $5 million project will be next-door to a 68-room, three-story Fairfield Inn and Suites by Marriot and a Shari�s restaurant, both currently under construction. Timothy Hovet, president of Sycan Development Corp., which is overseeing the project, said the Fairfield was scheduled to open in August. A restaurant franchise for a 4,000-square-foot area in the Comfort Suites has not yet been determined, Parks said. "That�s something we�ll decide about four to six months into it. We�ve been so busy dealing with the hotel part of it, we haven�t been as diligent in finding a restaurant for it," he said. The project was supposed to break ground in February but was delayed by an appeal of the site plan by Peninger/LaRue LLC, developers of adjacent land now owned by Pilot Travel Center. Peninger/LaRue asked to be partially reimbursed for streets, water lines, storm sewers and traffic signals installed near the intersection of South Peninger Road and LaRue Drive. The improvements were made when Pilot Travel Center was built in 1996. Joseph Kellerman, attorney for Peninger/LaRue, said the city was not fulfilling an agreement with his client that "guaranteed reimbursement for work required by the city to surrounding property in order to accommodate future businesses." Kellerman said costs incurred by his client for infrastructure improvements totaled over $420,000. Parks agreed to partially reimburse Peninger/LaRue if the council approved his site plan. He said delays in the process had "pushed everything back about two months." "Sometimes it�s not real fair, but as a developing group, you have to move ahead," he said. City administrator Jim Bennett said staff was still working on devising the reimbursement schedule, which would be based on gross acreage. Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2000 Mail Tribune, Inc.