ESCANABA — The Escanaba City Council approved a three-year moratorium on the construction of new hotels and motels in the city at its meeting Thursday night. The moratorium was proposed by Proxima Management, which is planning to build a hotel at the site of the old Delta County Correctional Facility.

Under the moratorium, the development of any new hotel or motel would be prohibited within the city for three years after Proxima receives a Phase I Certificate of Completion for the hotel it intends to build. Exemptions are in place for a hotel project planned at the site of the former Super One Foods, expansion projects at currently-operating hotels and motels, development at the House of Ludington, and the jail site project itself.

“I’ve done a lot of thinking about this, and first spoke against it. I’ve been convinced that this is necessary for Proxima to get the funding they need to get this project underway,” Mayor Marc Tall said.

Blasier felt similarly about the moratorium.

“I hate the idea of any moratorium, but we’ve given exceptions to the entities we predict might do something,” he said.