With plans to eventually change Plainsboro’s Wyndham Hotel into a Crowne Plaza franchise, the new ownership of the Wyndham property will first make room (and signage) for a new addition: Holiday Inn Express.
Plainsboro’s planning board met on Tuesday, September 18, as a minor application for signage for Holiday Inn Express was presented.
In July of 2011 USBank sold the 364-room Wyndham hotel to InnZen Hospitality, a Monmouth Junction hotel owner and operator whose CEO is Sunil Nayak of South Brunswick. According to Commercial Real Estate News, Nayak’s management team plans to re-brand the Wyndham as a Crowne Plaza hotel.
The applicant to the planning board — Princeton Three Hospitality Group LLC, a company created under InnZen’s umbrella — will add new directional and internal signage for Holiday Inn Express. Lester Varga, Plainsboro’s director of planning and zoning, said the signage is the first step in the overall transition.
“What they were seeking was a little bit above and beyond sign regulations the township already had in place for the location,” Varga said.
One Holiday Inn sign with a directional arrow for a right turn will be placed on Scudders Mill Road, close to the entrance driveway that serves Novo Nordisk’s new location in Plainsboro. Tom Letizia of Pepper Hamilton LLP, a Princeton-based real estate law firm, is the attorney representing Princeton Three Hospitality Group.
A raised, covered walkway connects the future Holiday Inn Express and the main body of the current Wyndham Hotel, which is expected to become a Crowne Plaza Hotel in 2013. Varga points out that Holiday Inn is a component of the Crowne Plaza brand.
“It’s not like two separate and competing hotels will chop the building in half. What they’ve done is, for business reasons, the Crowne Plaza brand decided to make part of the building Holiday Inn Express, and corresponding to that they need some signage to distinguish it from other buildings at the 800 Scudders Mill campus. For the Wyndham, its sign perpendicular to Scudders Mill Road will become signage for the Crowne Plaza,” Varga said.
Varga described the new Holiday Inn sign as a stone-based metal. He says the overall “sign package” will be consistent with the area — high quality, pristine, and purposeful.
The hotel re-branding would not be the first changes to occur at the property, as the current hotel was actually built to be only a conference and training center when Merrill Lynch owned and operated 800 Scudders Mill Road.
“It wasn’t even a private hotel, it was a private conference and corporate training center so it had a couple of different wings to it — a conference center wing, a hotel wing, and an executive suites wing. The executive suites wing which is closest to the 800 Scudders Mill property (current North American headquarters of Novo Nordisk) is going to be a Holiday Inn Express,” Varga said.
He added that Plainsboro Township has not yet received plans for any changes to the property other than signage.
Varga believes that when the application for the Crowne Plaza comes before Plainsboro’s Planning Board (possibly later this year) additional signage along Scudders Mill Road will be discussed.
