Columbia City Council unanimously approved a plan Wednesday that will bring a University of South Carolina hotel to campus.

The development plan also turns two parking lots owned by the university back into residential lots and preserves the historic Black House and Kirkland Apartments on Pendleton Street.

“We’ve had 25 years of border skirmishes (with the university),” said University Neighborhood resident Tom Gottshall “This brings a conclusion to those border skirmishes and puts the university and the neighborhood on the same page.”

The City Council’s blessing for the plan was widely expected, and comes on the heels of an agreement between USC and hotel groups originally opposed to the project.

The university fought publicly for more than a year with preservationists, neighborhood residents and hoteliers before wide consensus for the project could be reached.

“At the risk of sounding like a Pollyanna, I believe our community is stronger for what we went through,” said Councilwoman Anne Sinclair, who represents the University Neighborhood.

But some local hotel owners said they got a bum deal.

“We lost hands down,” said Rick Patel, owner of several area hotels, including the Comfort Suites on Huger Street. “The university had all the big shots on their side, all the presidents of businesses that we count on for business.”

The deal, announced Tuesday and brokered by Gov. Mark Sanford, limits occupancy rates for the Inn at USC, expected to open by 2005 on Pendleton Street, and precludes the university from building another hotel in Columbia for seven years.

In exchange, local hotel owners agreed to drop pending lawsuits against USC and stop all “media campaigns.”

Hotel owners asserted the project amounted to unfair government competition that would rob them of business.

The hotel industry is pleased with the agreement, said Tom Sponseller, president of the S.C. hospitality association and the chief negotiator for the hoteliers.

“The hotel owners met Monday night and this agreement was the consensus,” he said. “We really wanted to make sure the university wouldn’t build another hotel anytime soon.”

Backers of the new hotel also expressed their pleasure with the deal.

“I couldn’t be more pleased,” said Susie VanHuss, director of the USC Development Foundation, which is teaming up with the Lexington-based IMIC Hotels to build the new hotel.

VanHuss said she was concerned by all the “misinformation” that hotel owners were spreading.

“There was all this talk about how much state and federal money was going to the project, when there isn’t a cent,” she said. “And they said we didn’t (solicit bids) for the project, when in fact we sent requests to four companies.

“We didn’t even need to do that, by law, since we’re a foundation, not the university,” she added.

But within the local hotel industry, feelings are mixed, said hotel association spokesman Bob Wislinski.

Hotel owners realized they were outgunned, he said.

“Everyone knew the university had the City Council votes (for zoning approval),” Wislinski said.

“It’s not everything we wanted but that’s the nature of a compromise, I guess,” said Bill Ellen, general manager of Clarion Townhouse Hotel and Suites on Gervais Street. “We still feel that the private sector shouldn’t have to compete with the government sector.”

Patel said that deal would hurt nearby private hotels.

“It’s a tough market and the university’s hotel is just going to make that worse,” he said.

Many of the deal’s proponents, including Sponseller and VanHuss, said the compromise boded well for university-private sector relations in the future.

But Patel was less sure.

“(The university) already got away with one dirty deal, so what’s to prevent them from getting away with another?” he asked.

Reach Stensland at (803) 771-8358 or jstensland@thestate.com. Reach Wachter at (803)771-8404 or pwachter@thestate.com