Tax breaks awarded for hotel near Tucker

A four-story hotel will be built outside Tucker with the help of $417,000 in property tax breaks.

The $6.9 million Tru by Hilton hotel, located off the Northlake Parkway exit of I-285, will be the first hotel built in the area in 20 years, said Anand Patel, principal for ARG Hospitality.

"The Northlake area is primed for new hotel development,” Patel said. “This will help fill some of the demand that’s unmet in the marketplace.”

The board of Decide DeKalb, the county's economic development agency, voted 4-0 on May 11 to approve the tax incentive.

Board members said they were concerned that the 98-room hotel will only create 25 jobs with average salaries of $19,440, according to a fiscal analysis of the project.

But they decided the tax incentive was justified because they said it fills a market need and will still pay $724,000 in property taxes to DeKalb’s government and school system over the next 10 years.

The tax break was critical for the hotel to become a reality, Patel told the board. It’s scheduled to open in June 2018.

“It’s on the cusp of not being in the risk-return profile,” he said. “We needed to somewhat creatively make the project more viable.”

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