$80M plan at notorious hotel site coming in phases; Battle Ground awaits more development nearby

Years after legal fight brought Holiday Inn/Days Inn demolition, no timetable set for 320-bed project near I-65/Indiana 43, developers say, as hotels OK’d to be among the tallest in Greater Lafayette

This is the design MGM Plaza, an Illinois company, submitted for three hotels on one site near I-65 and Indiana 43 in Battle Ground.

A group of three hotels tied together in one site would be developed in stages of an overall $80 million, 300-plus bed project near the Indiana 43 offramp at Interstate 65 – once home to a Holiday Inn and Days Inn that notoriously fell into such disrepair after closing that it took court action to take down and clean up – developers told county zoning officials Wednesday.

Officials with MGM Plaza LLC – a Northfield, Illinois, company that bought the 6.5-acre property when it still contained the vacant remains of the 106,000-square-foot hotel and conference center in 2017 – didn’t have a projected timeline for the project this week.

First up Wednesday night was wrangling with the Area Board of Zoning Appeals over a series of variances they said were needed to make the project work.