Roseville’s hotel market is heating up – quite literally.

Developers and city officials braved scorching temps Friday to mark the groundbreaking of Hyatt Place, the latest in the city’s keep-track-of-them-if-you-can hospitality sector on Gibson Drive next to the Galleria.

How hot was it? Hot enough for an event employee to collapse from heat exhaustion during the ceremony, only to be picked up in mid-fall by a fortuitously-placed (and unexpectedly burly) District 4 Supervisor Kirk Uhler, who quietly carried the unidentified woman firefighter-style to an air-conditioned car.

But back to the hotel: Developed by Larkspur-based ABA Development, the $26 million Hyatt Place, part of a mixed-use development called Highland Village, will rise six stories (that’s a story taller than the city’s current record-holder) when completed in fall of 2009, boasting 151 rooms. A “select service” brand, Hyatt Place will target business travelers with offerings “a step above” competitors, said Scott Brown, ABA’s CEO. Sample perk: touch-screen room service ordering from all rooms, which also have free Wi-Fi and giant flatscreen TVs.

“It’s slightly more boutiquey,” Brown said, noting the area’s demographics made Placer County in general and the Galleria area in particular attractive. “It’s a fast-growing county and our studies show a demand for the upper-select product.”

The Hyatt Place is the latest in what is becoming a nexus of hotels in the Galleria area. A 126-room Hyatt Summerfield Suites, a project of Arizona-based Glimcher Ventures Southwest, is also planned for Highland Village. Developer Abe Alizadeh’s long-stalled hotel and conference center is within spitting distance from the site. A Homewood Suites and Hilton Garden Inn are adjacent to the nearby Creekside Town Center. Throughout the county, the number of rooms are expected to double over the next three years, according to Placer Valley Tourism.

And while guests at Hyatt Place won’t have a casino underneath them—unlike, say, in the 23-story mega-hotel tower under construction at Lincoln’s Thunder Valley Casino—they’ll have access to something almost as wallet-sapping: a pedestrian bridge connecting the hotel to the mall.

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Speaking of the Galleria, spokeswoman Stephanie Ringey says a flurry of activity at the former home of Borders earlier this month wasn’t indicative of an imminent store opening there. Instead, it was Nordstrom using the building for an anniversary “preview” sale (Biz Buzz wasn’t invited).

The Borders building went dark earlier this year, leaving the entry to the mall’s Promenade section without a major anchor tenant. But stay tuned: “We are in negotiations and will have a tenant in there,” Ringey said last week. “We’re working on a lot of things.”

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