A Best Western hotel and restaurant will rise along the Maine Turnpike in Auburn this spring. The hotel development is part of an eight-lot, 35-acre development at the Kittyhawk Business Park.
The hotel will be owned and operated by Giri Hotel Management. The project is a joint venture of Building Solutions and Hartt Transportation, the Bangor-based trucking company that owns the site. Groundbreaking will happen in late spring or early summer, according to Joe Casalinova, president of Building Solutions, the Oxford-based commercial real estate company that's designing, building and managing the project.
Casalinova said he is working with the Baldacci Group to bring a biotechnology company to the site that would create up to 30 new permanent full-time jobs in addition to the site development work needed. Casalinova described initial negotiations as possibly leading to a build-to-suit project that would be leased back to the biomedical company, which he declined to name.
Giri Hotel Management was founded in 2004. Its Maine hotel properties include a Comfort Inn and the Best Western Plus Civic Center Inn in Augusta, an EconoLodge in Freeport, the Best Western Plus in Waterville and The Parkwood Inn in Brunswick.