HAMILTON, Ohio — Hamilton could see a nearly 500% increase in hotel room capacity from the time it was a one-hotel town.
When Spooky Nook Sports Champion Mill opened and brought its 233-room Warehouse Hotel, the projects kept coming: The Well House Hotel, the Municipal Hotel, and the dual Hilton projects.
While only one of those subsequent hotel projects has been completed — The Well House, which opened in December 2024 — the other two projects could be under construction in 2026. Combined, these hotels are expected to add about 300 more hotel rooms by 2028 to the 400-plus rooms that exist today.
But with any multimillion-dollar project, delays can happen.
With the Municipal Hotel project, it took longer than anticipated to assemble the project’s capital stack, said Amro Kamel, the Mueller Hotel LLC chief executive.
“Everything is solid,” he said. “We’re just going through the formal process to get to the point where we can start construction. These projects are large and there are a lot of moving pieces.”
The same applies to the dual Hilton hotel project at the corner of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and North High Street. This required a $1 million environmental cleanup, as the site had some prior industrial uses before being converted into a parking lot some 60 years ago. City officials said they are waiting for a “no further action letter” from the state.
When these two projects are complete, Hamilton will have more than 700 hotel rooms in the city and will help capture traffic headed to Spooky Nook Sports Champion Mill, said Hamilton Executive Director of Development Aaron Hufford. Spooky Nook had about 1 million visitors to the country’s largest indoor sports complex in 2025, and most had to stay out of the city because of the lack of hotel rooms.
“We already know (they’re heading to Spooky Nook) on the weekends, and a lot of that traffic is leaving the city because we just don’t have the hotel capacity right now,” he said. “So, these hotels will invite even more people to stay in the downtown, supporting small businesses, restaurants.”
Another hotel project was expected to be going on at this time but has been delayed. The first phase of the Crawford-Hoying redevelopment of the former Cohen Recycling site on Black Street initially called for a 120-room hotel. Company officials told city and county officials they’re delaying that aspect of the project. Hufford said this is because “they know housing is a bigger need for the city, so that’s been their focus.”
The first phase of the Crawford-Hoying project also calls for apartments and townhomes, but the company hasn’t ruled out a hotel project, he said.
“The tourism industry is still pretty fresh in Hamilton,” Hufford said. “I don’t know if we had much tourism, historically, but we do now. And the question now is how much demand.”
The Municipal Hotel project was awarded $6 million in June 2024 in historic tax credits for the then $61.1 million project (it’s now projected to be between $50 million and $60 million). It calls for adding a four-story structure to the historic renovation, where most of the rooms will be located for the Marriott Tribute brand.
“The city of Hamilton is doing so much to continue its revitalization,” Kamel said. “Spooky Nook is obviously a big piece of that. We know there’s a data center that’s potentially coming down the road, we know there’s a lot of different big projects in the pipeline, from education to new businesses.”
As Hamilton continues to evolve, it needs amenities, he said, “especially when it comes to keeping people in the community, spending money in the community, enjoying the community, and hotels are a big part of that.”
A lot of dominoes had to be set up before the city was able to secure these hotel projects, as well as attract businesses to expand or relocate to Hamilton. Landing the hotel projects was not attributed to any one project, though Spooky Nook’s presence helps. Hufford said it’s “incremental change.”
“City Council and leadership at the time had to paint the vision; we had a lot of people, city staff, community leaders, all rowing in the same direction for a decade plus,” Hufford said. “That’s the only way you make a significant change like that.”
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