It took almost eight years, but a long-gestating hotel is finally opening its doors in the Traverse City area.

Jonathan Azer, president of the downstate-based hotel development and management company Premier Hospitality, tells The Ticker that the new Residence Inn by Marriott in East Bay Township is officially up and running as of Thursday.

The hotel adds six floors and more than 120 guest rooms to the local hospitality inventory. Azer previously described the hotel as featuring “apartment-style rooms with kitchens, complimentary breakfast, a fitness center, guest laundry, an indoor pool, and a rooftop bar and lounge serving custom cocktails and small bites.” That rooftop bar, called The East Bay Social, will debut “early next year,” according to Azer.

The opening of the Residence Inn marks the long-delayed conclusion to a project that has stretched on for the better part of a decade. The Ticker broke the news all the way back in March 2018 that downstate developers were looking to build a pair of adjacent hotels in East Bay Township, just east of Four Mile Road. The pandemic delayed that project significantly (along with multiple other planned hotel builds) but developers finally broke ground on the Residence Inn in 2022.

With the Residence Inn now open, Azer’s attention turns to the second hotel – a similarly-sized Staybridge Suites that will be located directly next door. He says the second project is “underway” and that construction crews “just completed the ground improvements.”

“We will erect the building sometime early spring next year,” Azer says of the Staybridge project.

Photo courtesy of Jonathan Azer