#Catalyst2: Davidson Hotel...Traffic Impact Analysis to be completed. Parking to be a major question.

When the proposal for the new 6 story Hyatt Place hotel and restaurant along Davidson's Griffith Street was submitted back in August, maybe the most glaring omission for the project was the lack of a Transportation Impact Analysis, or TIA.  The application submitted by local zoning attorney, Susan Irvin, said one was not completed because the property was going to be less than 75,000 square feet and per the town ordinance one was not required.

Then, just before the public information session   held October 3rd, the Town released its preliminary analysis of the project.  The hotel will be a tad smaller than originally expected based on the number of rooms coming in at 107 rather than 115.  However, the document also contained reference that a TIA would be completed because the hotel would total 85,000 square feet.  aShortChronicle reached out to Ms Irvin to see what had changed and why the increase in size after the application was submitted.  Below is Irvin's response.

"My understanding is that the upper floor plans have not been completely designed even now, but the hotel architect started out with a template for the ground floor.  Once they had comments from staff and flagship, they drilled down on the details – coffee shop space on the first floor, room layouts for 107 +/-rooms, flagship requirements, rooftop restaurant, etc. - that produced a more specific number and the local architect was able to start working on the design of  the exterior based on that information.  The original square footage was an estimate from the hotel architect based on the original first floor hotel template."

aShortChronicle is told by town staff there won't be more scheduled public meetings on the project, such as the required combined Planning Board/Town Board meeting or the public hearing, until this study is done.  That could take several weeks.

However, there is one immediate impact to the discussion.  Parking.

We'd previously told readers about the potential parking issues with the site.  In the project proposal the developer plans to only provide 70 off street spaces on its own site.  The plan also includes 19 on-street spaces and 29 "shared" spaces with Woodies next door.  Both of these pieces of the parking plan are allowed by town ordinance.

The problem?

The town ordinance requires 2 parking spaces per 1000 square feet of commercial space.  That small amount was called out in the earlier article when the estimate for the hotel was smaller.  Now that the hotel is bigger, the parking plan is well below town requirements.

At 85,000 sq feet the hotel should have 170 spaces, not 118.  That's 52 spaces short of minimum requirements.  According to the staff analysis, the developer says that may be no big deal.

"Usage patterns vary depending on the nature of each commercial space.  Based on their experience developing and operating the nearby Homewood Suites Hotel, the developer believes that parking area to be over-built after observing actual usage patterns. The developer noted that many visitors do not arrive at that hotel in their own private car but instead utilize taxis, corporate transportation, or ride-sharing services that do not require their use of parking facilities. Their experience in this local context informed the current proposal."

The problem with that logic?

These two hotels will be fundamentally different in one particular way.  The proposed Hyatt Place plans to have a roughly 5000 sq foot rooftop restaurant!

According to town staff, the restaurant will be calculated as a separate use beyond the hotel in the TIA.  It should also be noted, the hotel will have less than 1200 sq feet of meeting space, and  per the town, according to the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) this is considered an "ancillary use" for the hotel.  Basically, that means it's small enough to not attract large additional meetings or gatherings such as weddings.  Meeting space will not be calculated as a separate use.

The inclusion of a restaurant and the volume of cars it will attract is not the only problem with parking.  The plan also includes 29 "shared" spots with Woodies Auto next door.

The problem with that?

Woodies only has 29 off street parking spots!  That's not sharing.  That's more like taking.

The 29 spots at Woodies includes 3 handicapped spots and 2 spots right at the front door.  These can't realistically be included.  That leaves 24 spaces.  Sharing would imply no more than half of these should be included.

Common decency would say the Hyatt place should be able to claim no more than 12 spaces on the Woodies site, not 29.

Adding further to the parking problem is the fact that that the site is currently used entirely for parking.  On any given day you can see 20+ vehicles parked there.  While that may not be the developer's problem, it is a problem for the town.  One can reasonably expect that most or all of the 19 on-street parking spaces to be regularly consumed by the vehicles currently using that lot if a hotel is built.

As a practical matter, both of these situations are primarily weekday problems rather than nights or weekends which will alleviate the situation somewhat because those are the peak times for a hotel and not for CSD and Woodies.  However during the weekday that would mean the hotel proposal is effectively an additional 17 spaces short for Woodies and probably the full 19 short for its on-street parking - providing only 82 usable spaces, not 118.

Any TIA that is completed needs to directly take all of this into account and not just look at the peak use for the hotel and potential restaurant.

Regardless, this project is now looking at 3 significant approvals from the town.  1) Change of use for a hotel.  2) An increase in height to allow 6 stories.  3) At least a 30% reduction in parking provided versus what's required by ordinance.

That's a lot for Commissioners to approve and still claim to be acting in the best interests of the town.

#Catslyst2: Exit 30 Hotel Development developments...

Ahead of the October 3rd public information session at Town Hall, the town took a few of the mandated steps on Thursday to start publicizing the Hyatt Place hotel project.

On the site along Griffith Street and across Davidson Gateway Dr from the Community School of Davidson the ubiquitous "Development Project" sign went up on Thursday.  Also on Thursday, Town staff confirmed for aShortChronicle that notification letters to nearby property owners also went in the mail today.  (They had to go out by Friday to meet the town’s ordinance requirements.)

By our count per the list provided by the Town, 29 residential recipients will receive the notice.  The were several other properties also listed including others owned by the owner of the hotel site and two owned by the Town itself.

Here are the town requirements for who receives notice.

A notice shall be sent by first class mail to adjacent and adjoining property plus property 
owners within 100 feet of any adjacent and adjoining parcels. Notice also shall be given 
to other affected parties as determined by the Planning Director. The applicant shall prepare the notice, which shall be approved by the Planning Director. The notices with addressed stamped envelopes shall be given to the Planning Director not less than fourteen (14) days prior to the public input session and mailed by the Planning Director not less than ten 10 days prior to the date of the public input session.

The bold line in the above is interesting.

From what can be determined by who is not on the list, the residents who live on the back of Spinnaker Cove are not receiving a notice, but those in the front are getting one.  The same can be said for the many of the residents in the West Side neighborhood.  Only a few are getting the notice while many are not.  None of the residents down Gateway at Jetton received the notice.

Per the town's planning ordinance notifying all these people could have been done if they were identified as "affected".  Apparently, they are not.

In addition to these notices the town put out its required press release Thursday.

Citizens are invited to a public input session, led by developer Beacon IMG, Inc., on the proposed conditional master plan amendment to change the permitted use from two mixed-use commercial/residential buildings to a hotel at the corner of Griffith Street and Davidson Gateway Drive. The site is located at 127 Davidson Gateway Drive, consists of 2.1 acres, and currently serves as a surface parking lot.

The public input session will be held on Monday, October 3 from 4:00 to 7:00 p.m. in the Davidson Town Hall board room. It will be an open house format with no formal presentation. The hotel developer and project team, along with members of the Davidson Planning Department, will be present to discuss the proposed development and answer any questions. All citizens are invited to review the initial plans and provide comment.

Mark your calendars and plan to be there!

Parking...A core problem for proposed Davidson Hotel

When the application for the proposed new Hyatt Place  on Griffith St next to CSD landed on the town website, one of the first things that jumped off the page was the number of parking spaces "provided".  That number would be 118.

One thing about developments and parking is that parking isn't so much "provided"  as it's "required".  Municipalities tend to have requirements built into their planning ordinances.  Often there are specific requirements for specific uses such as hotels.  What's interesting is that after spending years rewriting its own planning ordinance, Davidson's doesn't mention anything specific about hotels.

According to a discussion had with Davidson Planning Director Jason Burdette at Tuesday's Transportation Plan Open House at Town Hall, the standard commercial requirements would have to make do for a hotel.

Those requirements state a minimum of 2 spaces per 1000 sq ft of development up to 3.5 spaces per 1000 sq ft.

At those rates, 118 spaces implies a hotel between 34,000 and 59,000 square feet.  Another way to estimate the size of the hotel is using the info on the Hyatt Place development guidelines website.  Starting with 115 rooms (a number provided to the town in August) and applying the guidelines gets a hotel a little over 50,000 square feet.

The real question is this.  Does only 118 spaces provide enough parking for a hotel with 115 rooms, nearly 1800 square feet of meeting space and a full service rooftop restaurant and outdoor dining space?

The simple answer is very likely not.  The situation is made worse when one considers the 118 spots includes 19 spaces of street parking according to the preliminary project diagram.

According to multiple articles and looking at different planning ordinances that do address hotels, the best way to estimate parking needs is to look at each use for the hotel separately while  factoring in different things like distance to the airport, is the restaurant open to the public, and how many staff are needed.

In the absence of the town having its own detailed requirements, aShortChronicle pulled together the below model for the parking needs for 115 guestrooms, 1800 square feet of meeting space, and a 140 seat full service restaurant with outdoor seating.  Maxing out all those uses for parking to achieve a "peak" parking need and then taking 80%, 60%, and 40% of those peak uses allows one to mix and match numbers for different scenarios.

The assumptions in the above chart make an honest attempt to not double count the need for parking between uses.  For example restaurants often have 1 parking spot for 3 seats and 1 parking spot for every two bar seats.  This model used 1 parking space every 4 seats and did not separate out for bar seating to accommodate for the fact that some restaurant patrons will also be hotel guests whose parking need is counted under for hotel category.  The model also minimized the need for hotel and restaurant staff parking by assuming 1/3 of staff will walk or carpool.  If these assumptions are wrong then parking needed is more likely to go up, not down.  Additionally, staffing numbers for hotel and restaurant may me low.

So, what are some obvious scenarios.

The Wedding:  It is easy to see a wedding or similarly sized event maxing out all uses.  That would mean the hotel is a full 91 spaces short of its needs. 209 - 118 = 91. This assumes this occurs when school next door is not in session and all on street parking is available.

The Daytime Business Forum: While peak parking need for this hotel will likely be in the evening for hotel and restaurant uses, any full use of the meeting space during the day will conflict with the peak parking need of the Community School of Davidson next to this site - meaning the street parking will be in use.  Taking the other uses at the hotel at 40% and adding the peak use for meeting space yields a hotel parking need of 136.  In a worst case, none of the street parking is available because of school use.  Meaning a total hotel deficit of 136 - 118 + 19 = 37.

The 60% Capacity Use Case:  Maybe the most concerning is the "average" use of all aspects at the same time.  It seems reasonable that could occur regularly.  If 10 on street parking spaces are in use already, then the hotel would have a 20 space deficit.  128 - 118 + 10 = 20.  It should be noted that any existing and new on street parking will be heavily used during the day by the existing school as the current parking capacity on the hotel site becomes unavailable.

Mix and match the numbers for your own scenarios.  There are likely more that will cause issues.  Pick apart the assumptions as well.

If this concerns you, contact the Davidson Board to encourage them to address this issue before they even consider approving this site for hotel use.

Reach the Board at board@townofdavidson.org.