A New York City company plans a large multi-use development including a new hotel on Clinton Avenue across from the Von Braun Center in downtown Huntsville, the company says.

Rocket Development Partners, Inc., has control of the 13-acre site known locally as “the Coca-Cola bottling plant” site, company spokesman and principal Dan Shields said today. It is one of the largest remaining open pieces of land in or around downtown, city officials confirmed.

Shields said a new hotel is part of the plan and that “numerous” hotel developers are interested in the site. “This hotel would complement the VBC and not compete with space in its existing or planned expansion while creating the ‘Clinton Gateway’ envisioned in (the city’s) master plan,” he said.

“We are a residentially focused developer, so we really like multi-family…,” Shields said. “We’re not just going to build an apartment building, but will take into account what’s going on across the street with the VBC, some of the cultural institutions that have been hallmarks of Huntsville, such as the art gallery, and have something that fits.”

Shields said the company identified Huntsville as a development opportunity while doing data analysis of emerging markets nationwide. “Huntsville just came up on the top of all of our screens,” Shields said. “So, we came to visit and to really touch and feel what is going on down there, and we were very impressed, very excited.” Shields said the partnership was surprised “such a prime piece of property was for sale. We moved very quickly to tie that up.”

Shields said he could not give a development timetable. “We have a process,” he said, “and we don’t rush it, because you only get one chance. We’re not going to build something and then knock it down and start over again.”

Shields said the developers would work with Mayor Tommy Battle’s office to create a sustainable, phased development. But he said national and global trends are clear.

“There’s a movement in this generation – people refer to it as millennials - that want to live downtown,” he said. “There really hasn’t been a lot of new multi-family development downtown. There’s been a couple: the Avenue, the Twickenham, the Lofts project. But there’s not a lot of inventory there, not a lot of product.”

A thriving downtown needs a balance of residents and “a sprinkling of retail the residents can support,” Shields said. “You can’t do one without the other. Nobody wants to live downtown if there’s nothing to do downtown, nothing to buy downtown. And nobody’s going to open shops downtown if there’s nobody to buy from them.”

Shields said the development would fit in with the city’s master plan for downtown, and the developers have hired the same company that did the plan, Urban Design Associates, to help design the project. Shields said the company has also hired Matheny Goldmon architects of Huntsville, and architect Paul Matheny confirmed the partnership today.

“We believe in the city’s vision,” Shields said. “We’ve seen from Mayor (Tommy) Battle’s history that he has a real smart, progressive business approach to growing the city, and we want to be a part of that.”

“It’s exciting that another opportunity site is going to be taken up,” Battle said. “It sounds like they will fit in perfectly with the master plan and what is happening downtown. We’ve said we need to grow north, south, east and west - and that includes center.”

Shields praised the Von Braun Center expansion. “We’re thinking we want to make it more than a destination for an evening out,” he said. “Make it part of the city’s fabric where people are walking to the VBC and have a place to have a drink after or a nice dinner before. And stay.”