$50 Mln Hotel Project Proposed for Dulles Station in Herndon, Va.

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A South Carolina hospitality company backed by Miami Dolphins owner Wayne Huizenga is vying for a piece of the planned $1.1 billion Dulles Station in Fairfax County.

OTO Development, already building a hotel at National Harbor in Prince George's County, is negotiating to buy 11 acres in Dulles Station for a $50 million hotel project.

The company wants to construct a 182-room Sheraton and a 153-room Hyatt Place, a new boutique line of lodging from Hyatt, at the site in Herndon, says President and CEO Corry Oakes.

OTO is quickly becoming a major player in hotel development in Greater Washington.

Aside from the Dulles Station and National Harbor projects, the company is under contract to build two additional hotels in Fairfax County and one on Route 7 in Loudoun County. It's also in the final stages of negotiations for five more local hotels, Oakes says.

"We're big believers in the D.C. market," he says. "We're pursuing several deals at this time." OTO's proposal to rezone the Dulles Station property off Sunrise Valley Drive is set for a July 27 public hearing with Fairfax County's planning commission. If approved by the commission, the plan would need a final nod from the county's board of supervisors.

"The county has been good to work with so far, but we're not assuming anything until a final approval," Oakes says. "We're also meeting with citizens groups. If everything goes to plan, we'll move ahead as quickly as possible."

OTO (www.otodevelopment.com) was founded in 2004 by Huizenga and George Johnson Jr., the former CEO of Extended Stay America. In its short existence, the company has already developed more than $200 million in hotel projects around the country. It has projected a total of $1 billion worth of projects nationally between 2005 and 2008.

One of OTO's projects is a 151-room Hampton Inn and Suites at National Harbor, a $2 billion development expected to be ready for visitors in the spring of 2008.

At Dulles Station, several projects are starting to come together in a development that will eventually encompass 2.7 million square feet with 1,100 residential units, 1.5 million square feet of office and hotel space and 70,000 square feet of retail space.

The developer's majority landowner, Herndon-based Crimson Partners, is building a 169-unit condominium complex that should be finished by the end of the year, says Kevin Dougherty, Crimson's managing partner. Units are selling from the upper $200,000 range to the mid-$400,000 range.

Trammell Crow Co. meanwhile is progressing with construction on a six-story, 185,000-square-foot office building slated to be finished at Dulles Station in May 2007.

The company (www.trammellcrow.com) has started design work on a companion office building that would be 12 stories and 360,000 square feet, says Steve Shelesky, Trammell Crow's managing director of development and investment in Northern Virginia.