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GREENSBORO — A pair of hotels that could open in the next year are the latest in a glut of new accommodations popping up in the Greensboro area.

Work on the foundations for a 124-room Courtyard hotel and an 80-room Comfort Suites could start next week, two local hotel owners said Thursday. Together, the buildings could cost about $12 million.

The Courtyard, near Fordham Boulevard and N.C. 68, and the Comfort Suites, off High Point Road, come on the heels of two recent hotel openings and just before a series of new or renovated hotels are scheduled to open.

Hoteliers are aiming hundreds of new rooms at the airport area, anticipating traffic that could come when the FedEx hub opens at Piedmont Triad International Airport in 2009.

Others see opportunities on Wendover Avenue and High Point Road, where older hotels are getting new competitors.

"I think what's happening now is everyone's looking for the modern facility," said Bhupen Patel, managing partner of BPR Properties.

His company is behind the new Courtyard, a Marriott brand being built next to another Marriott hotel: a 116-room Residence Inn that Patel opened here in early October. Patel also just opened a full-service Doubletree hotel in the former Howard Johnson building on High Point Road.

That's just a hop from the site of the new Comfort Suites, a project owned by Jay Patel, co-owner of the neighboring Days Inn — and no relation to Bhupen Patel.

"It's mainly because High Point Road hasn't seen any new development," Jay Patel said of the new brands popping up and the old hotels getting new names and new looks.

The Doubletree and new Residence Inn, plus the upcoming openings of the Proximity Hotel on Green Valley Road and a new Holiday Inn off East Lee Street, will leave the Greensboro area with about 84 hotels, said Gail Murphy, director of marketing for the Greensboro Convention and Visitors Bureau.

That's 9,268 hotel rooms, she said, and it doesn't include properties in High Point and Jamestown. Murphy declined to comment on the building boom, and other officials with the visitors bureau and the Guilford County Hotel/Motel Association were unavailable.

On top of new and planned projects, major chains with local properties also are swapping brands on existing hotels as new ones go up.

Among the changes:

Hyatt Corp. is redoing the AmeriSuites hotel on Stanley Road as a Hyatt Place, scheduled to open this fall. Once the new Holiday Inn opens off Lee Street, the Holiday Inn Express there will become a Quality Inn & Suites. The Quality Inn on Seneca Road will become an EconoLodge.

Contact Michelle Jarboe at 373-7075 or mjarboe@news-record.com