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Third resort coming to Grapevine

A resort built by Stand Rock Hospitality will join the ranks of the Gaylord Texan and Great Wolf Lodge as resorts that include a water park in Grapevine.

GRAPEVINE -- It's a North Texas city with a growing reputation.

"It's quaint. Really neat," said Kristi Mears, who's visiting from Frisco.

"We've had people from Russia come in," said Cindy Stover, who works at a clothing and gift store on Main Street. "France is a big one."

But reputation isn't the only thing growing these days in Grapevine.

Tuesday night, Grapevine City Council approved an incentive package estimated around $9 million to bring in a new resort and water park on a plot of land off Grapevine Mills Highway. The money will come from the city's hotel occupancy tax.

Land in Grapevine that will soon be a resort/water park built by Stand Rock Hospitality.

"[It's] a perfect spot for a family/tourist destination such as Stand Rock," said Jon Regnerus, director of development for Stand Rock Hospitality, which is poised to build and run the not-yet-named resort.

According to information from Stand Rock and the Grapevine Convention and Visitors Bureau, the resort will include an indoor and outdoor water park, laser tag, a ropes course, a spa, meeting space, and more. It'll create more than 1,000 jobs each year in the area as well, a press release said.

The first phase, which the incentive helps cover, will include 420 hotel rooms and 170,000 square feet of water park amenities. The first phase will cost $170 million.

Jon Regnerus

"We target bona fide family tourist destinations, and that's what Grapevine is," Regnerus said.

The city already attracts a large number of tourists, officials said.

"We actually welcome more than 20 million visitors per year," said Leigh Lyons of the Grapevine Convention and Visitors Bureau.

Some of those visitors already stay at Grapevine's two other major resorts, Great Wolf Lodge and the Gaylord Texan. Both of those resorts also have water park amenities.

The Gaylord Texan.

But Lyons says the demand is there for a third resort, as the city builds its image as a vacation destination. She said the three resorts not only offer different choices to different consumers, they give visitors reasons to come back.

Regnerus said his company did its due diligence, and doesn't believe it will be an over-saturation of the market.

"Knowing what Grapevine has going on here, that’s what kept us here," he said.

According to Stand Rock and the  Grapevine Convention and Visitors Bureau , the resort will include an indoor and outdoor water park, laser tag, a ropes course, a spa, meeting space, and more. This video still is from a Stand Rock resort in Tennessee.

It's what appears to keep visitors here, too.

"I think you can’t have too many water parks in Texas," said Marcus Mears of Frisco, who's visited the Gaylord. "It's hot."

"There’s always room for growth. Lots of people live here," his wife, Kristi, said.

If all goes as planned, the city says Stand Rock will break ground some time in 2017, and the resort could be open in 2019.

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