Hart Hotels of Buffalo, NY submitted a site plan review for and announced an expansion of the current Holiday Inn back in early 2012. If you’ve ever been to a conference downtown, you’ll probably appreciate this project. In addition to knocking down most of the one-story guestroom wings, current ballroom, and building a sizeable new hotel tower, this project will be building out a 15,000 square foot conference center, plus a swanky restaurant/bar on the roof of the new tower. The current ground-level ballroom is about 4,000 square feet, and the new one will be 6,000 square feet, seating about 350 people at maximum capacity.

The new tower plans show nine stories (including the roof level) with 115 guest rooms, although the current guestroom wings (built in 1972) to be demolished total 100 rooms, so net gain is 15 rooms. Initially the project was slated to begin November 2012 and end March 2014, but we’ve yet to see shovels hit the ground.