A stretch of Ottawa Street would be dramatically altered if plans for a hotel and event center develop.

Posh Hospitality says it continues to work on a SpringHill Suites hotel at 65 N. Ottawa St. and has acquired more property for the project that will require extensive renovation of the old Barrett’s Hardware store.

Meanwhile, the owner of the old St. Mary Carmelite Church at 113 N. Ottawa St. has demolished the friary building and front church steps in a long-term effort to stabilize the church building and put it to new use.

The two sites are in a two-block stretch of North Ottawa Street and around the corner from Harrah’s Joliet Hotel & Casino, posing the possibility of a concentrated section of downtown Joliet devoted to entertainment and overnight stays.

Both projects also have had starts and stops over the years as developers take on the challenge of renovating 19th Century buildings that have been out of use for decades.

“We’re still progressing,” Dan Scott, vice president of operations for Posh Hospitality, said Friday.

Posh at one time targeted a 2020 opening for the 82-room SpringHill Suites. But construction stopped with the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic. As the developer prepared to resume construction this year, it learned costs have gone up.

Scott said Posh now is looking at ways to control cost increases on a project that had already been estimated at $18.7 million. The plan includes adding two more floors to the Barrett’s building.

“We had architects looking at the building last week,” he said. “We’re hoping to start (construction) later this year.”

Posh is in the process of acquiring more property for the project.

“We’re purchasing the building next door,” Scott said. “We have a contract to buy 71 N. Ottawa.”

Posh is not looking to enlarge the hotel but plans to use the property to create an Ottawa Street entrance to the hotel, he said.

More definite plans should be ready in the next two months, he said.

Meanwhile, the developer also will have to renegotiate a package of city tax incentives that total $5 million. The incentives came with a time limit that expired when Posh halted construction.

Rod Tonelli, interim economic development director for the city, said it was too soon to say whether Posh will look to increase the incentive package based on new construction costs.

“That’s unknown at this point,” Tonelli said. “They’re working on design plans. We’ll see how that transpires.”

Posh has been working on the downtown hotel plan since 2018.

Efforts to renovate and re-use the St. Mary Carmelite Church have been underway since 2011, when a private developer acquired it from the Diocese of Joliet. At the time, the diocese was believed to have plans to demolish the building. Private acquisition was seen as a way to save the downtown landmark.

But putting the building to new use while saving its historical integrity has been a slow process.

Brian Morgan is the third developer to take on the task.

He acquired the building in early 2020 under a restrictive covenant that prevents demolition of the church itself but allowed for tearing down a friary building and the front steps to the church.

Morgan said future plans for the property are “not officially decided. But I would like to turn that space into an event center.”

He noted the steps that were recently demolished and the friary that was torn down were not part of the original church building. The church was constructed from 1887 to 1892 with Joliet limestone. A plan to designate it a local landmark was set aside in favor of the restrictive covenant out of concerns no private developer would attempt to put the building to use once it received landmark status.