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The University of California Davis has begun exclusive negotiations with a Davis hotelier to build a campus hotel and convention center near the new Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts.
The university is negotiating with Ashok Patel, who owns three hotels in Davis, and his uncle B.B. Patel, who owns and operates the Crown Plaza Hotel next to Stanford University in Palo Alto.
"It will be a first-class hotel," said Ashok Patel.
The cost isn't settled yet, but an earlier version that included an office building had been pegged at $35 million.
University planners have been working to build a hotel and conference center for four years. The last effort
ran into opposition from local hotels, the city and eventually a lawsuit by a Davis businessman.
The previous developer, Sacramento-based All Star Development, dropped out after the suit was filed last year. When the university won the legal dispute, campus planners went back to the short list of companies that had been involved in the original request for proposals. That led to Patel.