RIDGELAND, Miss. (WLBT) – Take a drive around town and you’ll see several hotel projects in the works. Even more so at the planning stage.

Chico Patel, founder and CEO of Ridgeland-based Wealth Hospitality Group (formerly Heritage Hospitality Group), says extended-stay hotels in the Jackson metro area are typically more than 90 percent occupied.

“Across the country, extended stay properties are performing at a high level, but with the demand from all the construction going on around our city, it’s just a big boom happening right now,” says -it about hotels, which typically offer amenities such as kitchenettes for travelers. guests looking for apartment-style accommodation.

That’s why Patel built a new Woodspring Suites off Riverwind Drive in Pearl. Choice Hotels’ mid-range economy brand will have 118 rooms when it opens next month. Patel had previously planned to build a traditional hotel on the site, but pivoted to extended stays to take advantage of current demand.

“This will actually be one of WoodSpring’s first extended stay projects in the state of Mississippi,” Patel said. “It’s aimed at an extended-stay clientele, where an average guest spends seven to 10 days.”

In Jackson’s Fondren neighborhood, Patel opened a Homewood Suites on North State Street at Lorenz Boulevard about four years ago. At first, he said there wasn’t enough water pressure to reach the sinks and showers on the top floor. After JXN Water resolved that issue, Patel decided to embark on a stalled project to build a new Hampton Inn up the street, on vacant land that is currently used as a parking lot between The Station and Pig & Pint.

“Fonderen, the medical district, the football games, the children’s hospital: there is a huge demand but very little land available in this area,” he said.

The Hampton Inn will include 111 guest rooms, ground floor retail space and a wine bar. Construction has not yet begun, but Patel hopes to complete it by the third quarter of 2026.

Patel is also building a new Tru by Hilton next to the Holiday Inn Express he recently opened on Interstate 55 Frontage Road in Ridgeland. It will have 98 rooms and is expected to open its doors in 2025.

Patel likes it here so much that he decided to build his new office there as well.

“It will be a 15,000 square foot building right behind our hotels,” he said.

It’s perhaps not far from his most ambitious project: transforming the former Cabot Lodge Hotel, off County Line Road in Ridgeland, into an upscale assisted-living facility called Landmark Lifestyles.

“The result was beautiful, so we are very, very excited,” he says. “We have over 25 pre-sales in progress and we just received our certificate of occupancy, so we will now tour the property for people to come and visit us.”

Patel’s company has already built Landmark Lifestyles facilities in Tupelo and Bryant, Arkansas, and he hopes to replicate their success here at home.

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