The hotel and retail center are the second and third stages of a 72-acre development in the village of Moenkopi along Arizona Route 264 across US Highway 160 from Tuba City. The locally based Moenkopi Development Corp. completed the first phase, a $5.3-million wastewater treatment plant, last year and quickly began construction on Tuuvi Travel Center, a 12-acre project that will include a 9,000-sf Express Stop convenience store, 16-pump gas station, car wash, four retail shops leased to Native American crafts dealers, a Taco Del Mar food franchise and a tribal-run cafe.
The travel center was financed with grants of $1 million from HUD and $200,000 from the US Department of Agriculture along with a $4.8-million loan from Birmingham, AL-based Compass Bank. It was named for a 19th century Hopi leader whose name was distorted as Tuba in the nearby town.
Dr. Daniel Honahni, president and CEO of Moenkopi Development, says the organization hopes to choose a design-build contractor by mid-May for the 100-room hotel and conference center. The corporation has received grants of $4 million from the Hopi Nation and $2 million from HUD to help underwrite the project. The unspecified remainder will come from a loan that has been pre-arranged with the Albuquerque-based Native American Investment Group. Honahni says financing also is in place for a separate $1.5-million, full-service restaurant to be built in concert with the hotel. He hopes to see construction on both projects begin by July. The hotel and restaurant will be managed and operated by the tribe.
Honahni also met this week with a potential developer of a 100-unit multifamily complex to provide housing for employees of the travel center and hotel as well as the village's 1,000 or so residents. "Finding a housing developer is not going to be a problem because there's no way we can't rent out every single apartment," he says. "We just don't have any housing. We have two or three families in a home. People are always looking for places to live." The development's last component will be a 16-acre cultural interpretive center.
The CEO tells GlobeSt.com he and his board initially considered trying to line up financing for the entire development, but decided it made more sense to do it piece by piece in order to build equity. "We're chugging along in a very methodical manner," he says. "I thought it would be foolhardy to undertake such a large development all at once when we don't have the employee resources to handle the scope of work or the place to house the work crews. It also would have cost much more to borrow such a large amount."
Noting that the location is regarded as the western gateway to the Hopi tribal lands, Honahni reports the region attracts more than nine million tourists annually. "Tuba City and everything south of 160 is Navajo land. This is the entry to the Hopi Nation. But we've lacked the services to enable tourists to come here," he says. "This will change that while providing some 400 much-needed jobs for our people."
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