You won’t have to wait much longer to check out Lawrence’s newest hotel and major downtown development. The owner of the new Marriott TownPlace Suites at Ninth and New Hampshire streets has told me that the hotel will open sometime between Jan. 14 and Jan. 21.

“We’re very excited,” said Chuck Mackey of Capital Management Inc. “We have built eight hotels and we have never had one go so well.”

The project got out of the gates slowly as neighbors, city commissioners and developers debated about how tall the building should be, but once that issue was resolved, the project has had a pretty smooth ride. (Smooth ride, except for the construction cone that is still wrapped around my axle from when the road in front of the project was one-way for many months. But as we reported last month, New Hampshire Street is now fully open, and I’ve grown to find the “thunka, thunka, thunka” noise kind of soothing.)

The project had its last minor debate at City Hall on Tuesday, when the developers appealed a decision by the city’s Historic Resources Commission that the proposed sign for the hotel was too large and wasn’t pedestrian-oriented enough to meet the downtown design guidelines. City commissioners ultimately found that the sign did meet the design guidelines and noted that most folks arrive at their hotel via car, not on foot.

Mackey said the hotel already has hired 35 employees and likely will add another three to five employees in the coming days. He said he thinks the hotel will fill a growing niche in the Lawrence market: visitors who need to stay for more than a night or two.

“It is designed for staying a week or longer, but we recognize in an event-driven town like Lawrence, it also will accommodate people who have a shorter stay,” Mackey said.

The hotel will be unusual in Lawrence in that all 91 of its units will be suites, which in this case means that all of the units are equipped with a full kitchen.

I also expect the hotel building to have a restaurant. As we previously have reported, there is a lot of speculation that the hip Kansas City Mexican restaurant Port Fonda is interested in the ground-floor space in the hotel building. I wasn’t able to get any confirmation of that from Mackey, but everything else I’m hearing indicates that the restaurant is still very interested in the space.

In other news and notes from around town:

• As one large project wraps up, another one is set to begin. As we’ve previously reported, the Chicago-based development group HERE, LLC has decided to move forward with its plans for a 624-bedroom apartment building at 11th and Indiana streets, which is right across the street from KU’s Memorial Stadium.

I had a chance to talk with the leader of the project at Tuesday’s City Commission meeting, where commissioners approved some technical details related to the demolition and construction plans for the project.

Jim Heffernan, a principal with the development group, said he expects to have the apartment building open by July 2016. Heffernan said people will start noticing demolition of buildings at the old Berkeley Flats apartment complex in the next several days.

During the construction project, about 18 parking spaces along the west side of Indiana Street will be lost to accommodate the establishment of a construction zone. When the project is completed, angled parking stalls will be added along the perimeter of the building. They’ll be public parking spaces, but current plans call for them to be metered. In addition to the apartment units, the building also will house about 15,000 square feet of retail/commercial space on the ground floor. The metered parking is expected to serve a lot of the demand for those retail spots, while a high-tech, automated parking garage is designed to serve the apartment uses.

No word yet on what the retail projects may be but certainly a restaurant or two is a possibility and maybe some other type of retails businesses that would cater to students. (You know, like stores that sell study aids, slide rules, postcards for writing home, and that sort of normal student stuff.) In all seriousness, some of you may be wondering about whether a straight bar use would be part of the mix. That type of use would require a whole other round of approvals from the City Commission, and I haven’t seen any signs that the development is headed in that direction.

The project has created a lot of debate with incentives package — an 85 percent tax rebate — and some of its requests for reduced parking, which ultimately were denied by the commission. But that is all behind the project. Now, it could be exciting to watch this building come out of the ground. The project has been estimated at $70 million to $75 million, which would make it one of the more expensive building projects in recent memory. It plans to offer what Heffernan has called “class A” student housing that comes with a lot of amenities from pools to rooftop gardens and other such items.

The project also could be groundbreaking in the sense that it is developing a lot of units on a relatively small site. City planners for a long time have been talking about building projects more densely in order to cut down on urban sprawl. The automated parking garage that the project is using is a big part of how the project is able to build a lot of units on a relatively small site. We’ll see if this project becomes a model for others to build more urban-style development in the Oread neighborhood and other areas of the community.

But mainly, it really will change the look of the area near campus. This article back in March showed some renderings for the project. The renderings have changed, and I’ll work to get some new ones, but these older ones still give a sense of how large the project is going to be, and how different the area will look to the thousands of football fans who come to the area each year.

“This has been a new experience for everyone,” Heffernan told me. “No one has ever built a project in Lawrence using this mixed use zoning category. We’re happy to be the first. We think it will distinguish itself. We think it is going to be a very good gateway to the university.”

• Finally, a bit of City Commission candidate news. Get ready for more candidates to enter the race. David Crawford, one of the neighborhood leaders who has been working to bring a grocery store to downtown Lawrence, will file today for a seat on the commission. I’ll have more on his campaign later today. I think current school board member Kris Adair also is close to making a decision on whether to run for a spot on the City Commission. There is a lot of speculation that she indeed will seek a seat. Yesterday’s filings of Mike Anderson and Bob Schumm brought us to seven candidates and assured us of having a March primary. Now, the question seems to be whether we’ll top the 10-candidate mark. At this point, I would bet yes.