Stuttgart hotel project breaks ground

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Stuttgart hotel project breaks ground
By John Vandiver, Stars and Stripes
European edition, Friday, January 23, 2009

BÖBLINGEN, Germany — A $31.5 million hotel construction project commenced Thursday at the U.S. Army Garrison Stuttgart’s post in Böblingen, further cementing Panzer Kaserne as the service hub for Stuttgart’s military community of roughly 20,000 people.

In the past couple of years, Panzer has evolved from a sleepy outpost, home to a couple of units, into the first stop for all people moving in and out of town. The new 218-room Panzer Hotel will make that process more efficient for families, according to Stuttgart’s garrison commander.

"As part of the USAG Stuttgart master plan, we have tried to bring and consolidate all the important services to support our community into one location," said Col. Richard M. Pastore. "This hotel now allows us to provide lodging to our incoming and outgoing families and servicemembers on the same installation where they shop at the (post exchange), do
in- and out-processing (and) vehicle registration. All of those things that they used to have to run around five different installations to do, they can now do here, once this hotel is in place."

The hotel will be the fourth for the Stuttgart military community, which also has hotels at Patch, Kelley and Robinson barracks. The additional rooms are expected to help meet the growing demand for lodging and minimize the need for people to take up residence at costly city hotels.

Instead of taxpayer dollars, the hotel project is being paid for through nonappropriated lodging funds, garrison officials said.


Rest of article at: http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=60196