Two of the land sites I’m marketing right now have nothing to do with warehouses or apartments. Both are zoned for hotel use, and both sit on roads with the traffic counts and corporate neighbors to support it.
That’s not an accident of zoning. It reflects where hotel demand is actually going in this market, and it’s worth walking through why.
The National Pattern: Extended Stay Is Where the New Rooms Are
Full-service hotel construction has slowed nationally, while extended-stay and select-service products keep getting built. Industry researchers tracking the sector point to the same driver: these formats cost less to build, run leaner on staff, and match how business travelers actually use a hotel room today, as a base for a multi-week project or relocation rather than a one-night stopover. That pattern holds in supply-constrained submarkets especially, where a well-located parcel with the right zoning is worth more than the building that could eventually sit on it.
Central Jersey Already Proves the Demand
You don’t have to take my word for the demand. Look at Route 1 through Princeton, where extended-stay properties have clustered around Carnegie Center for years, serving corporate travelers headed to Bristol-Myers Squibb, Bloomberg, Educational Testing Service, and Bank of America. That corridor didn’t get built out because someone guessed right. It got built out because corporate and life sciences employment along Route 1 generates a steady stream of multi-week stays, and hotel operators followed the demand.
The same logic applies to the Route 130 corridor, on sites that haven’t been built on yet.
Two Sites Built for This Use
I have close to 15 acres of Highway Commercial land on Quakerbridge Road in Lawrenceville, with shared access to Costco and roughly 30,000 cars passing by each day. It sits one mile from Route 1 with direct access to I-295 and the Turnpike, and the zoning permits hotel use alongside retail, office, lab, headquarters, self-storage, and senior living.
A few miles away, off Exit 3A on I-195 in Hamilton, I have a 4.47-acre R&D parcel at a signalized light, a hundred yards from the highway. The zoning is good for a hotel, headquarters, or self-storage, and an adjacent 5.44 acres can be combined to get close to 10 acres if a buyer needs more room.
Neither site has a hotel on it yet. Both have what a hotel operator screens for first: highway visibility, signalized access, and a nearby corporate base that doesn’t depend on a single employer.
What This Means for Owners Weighing Their Options
If you’re sitting on Highway Commercial or R&D-zoned land in this corridor and only thinking about the uses everyone else is chasing, hotel use is worth a second look. New supply nationally is skewing toward exactly the extended-stay format this market already supports, according to a 2026 hospitality market outlook citing the Highland Group’s national research on the segment. That’s a smaller, more specific buyer pool than an industrial or multifamily site draws, which is exactly why it pays to have a broker who knows which sites and which operators actually fit.
If you want to see the sites or talk through whether your land fits this use, the details are at fennelly.com.
