“The lease calls for the use of 75 non-exclusive parking spaces on the third and fourth floors,” said David Francis, Haywood County director of community and economic development.

Parks Hospitality Group is a hotelier that currently has 11 hotels in Tennessee, South Carolina and North Carolina, including the Doubletree Inn in Asheville. The group seeks to construct a 75-room hotel.

According to the lease, PHG will pay the county $350 per space, per year, for the first 10 years of the lease. For the second 10 years of the lease, the cost will increase to $400 per space, per year.

That translates to $262,500 over the first 10 years, and $300,000 over the second 10 years for a grand total of $562,000 over the life of the lease — a tidy sum, since the garage doesn’t charge for parking.

Francis said the parking garage has 351 spaces, 13 spaces for compact cars and 10 spaces for motorcycles. The third and fourth floors, where the leased spots are located, each have 65 spaces, so designating 75 of them for the hotel on a first-come, first-served basis shouldn’t be a problem, according to Francis.

“The parking deck averages roughly about 223 users per day during the week, and surprisingly only about 20 per day during the weekend, so we felt like there was capacity there,” he said.

Francis said PHG is still in the due diligence phase of the project. The lease doesn’t yet have a start date, which would be the day the hotel opens for business.

Commissioners approved the lease unanimously, although Kirk Kirkpatrick was told by County Attorney Frank Queen that he had to abstain from the vote, since he represents the parcel’s seller.