According to Ryan Cronk, vice president of development forPremier Properties, the rough development costs for each hotelcurrently map out to $12 million to $16 million. "These figures arevery preliminary, though," he tells GlobeSt.com.

Cronk says this is Premier Partners' first foray into hoteldevelopment and its first partnership with Interstate Hotels. "Wewere looking to add hotels to some of our retail developments," hesays, adding its retail and lifestyle projects are prime candidatesfor a hotel component. He says Premier has at least four otherprojects in the pipeline, "some of which will be developed withInterstate."

As is often the case with the locally based company'spartnerships, Interstate will invest a 15% equity interest into theJV and manage the hotels after they deliver. "This is our 13thjoint venture partnership and represents a continuation of ourstrategic plan to expand our real estate ownership through minorityequity positions as a complement to our management contractbusiness, which remains our core business," Thomas Hewitt,Interstate's CEO says in a press release.