Wednesday, March 9, 2005

Bald Mountain Lodge parcel sold

One hotel plan is dead but another might surface


By GREGORY FOLEY
Express Staff Writer

Brian Barsotti

The Ketchum Main Street parcel that was planned to be the site of the city's biggest, most-luxurious hotel has been sold.

Brian Barsotti, the Ketchum developer and attorney who spent four years planning to build a luxury hotel and conference center at 151 S. Main St., confirmed Monday that a deal to sell the high-profile site closed on March 1. The property—which comprises an entire city block near the southern entrance to the city—is the site of the defunct Bald Mountain Lodge motor inn.

Barsotti declined to disclose the sales price for the approximately one-acre, commercial-zoned parcel. However, he indicated that the sum likely resembles the onetime asking price of $6.5 million.

"It was a good price," Barsotti said.

The buyer, Barsotti said, is a development group from Seattle.

Barsotti said the sale was not conditioned upon the city of Ketchum reinstating his now-expired approval to build an 80-room hotel on the parcel. Nonetheless, the buyers have expressed an interest in developing a hotel on the site, he said.

Harold Moniz, Ketchum planning director, said he has received no application to redevelop the property. Last month, the buyers visited City Hall to research the development potential of the property, Moniz said, and "seemed committed to the idea of putting a hotel there."

Barsotti put the Bald Mountain Lodge property on the market last summer, after an approximately 10-month search for partners to invest in and operate a proposed $40 million hotel on the site came up short.

At the time, Barsotti said he strongly believed that new hotel projects in downtown Ketchum are not viable under the city's current zoning regulations, which are being enforced amid ever-escalating land and development costs.

In February 2004, Barsotti developed a partnership with part-time Ketchum resident Mariel Hemingway, the granddaughter of deceased author Ernest Hemingway. The pair announced they planned to develop a hotel with a Hemingway theme but the concept never came to fruition.

Since putting the property on the market, Barsotti has consistently maintained that the city must provide more attractive incentives to hotel developers if a new hotel is to be built in the city center.

When his hotel plan was approved in 2003, Barsotti received permission to build a three-story, 47-foot-high structure limited to 85,000 square feet of floor area. His original plan for a 59-foot building was rejected.

"We tried to design and build a hotel under the ordinance that existed and just couldn't get it done," he said.

City officials—many of whom have stated publicly that Ketchum needs to encourage hotel development in the downtown area—have at times shown interest in amending regulations for hotel development in the city's commercial core.

On Monday, March 7, the Ketchum City Council discussed an overall trend of the city collecting fewer local-option-tax dollars from hotel-room rentals. The trend, it was suggested, might be related to the loss of hundreds of hotel rooms in recent years, sometimes as hotel properties are redeveloped with more-lucrative housing developments.

Barsotti said he believes that if the city does not make an effort to provide more incentives for hotel construction the new owners might choose another alternative that contributes less to the local tourist economy.

"There's a demand for banks and there's a demand for $2 million to $3 million condos," he said. "If they can't get a hotel done, I imagine that's the way they'll go."

As for letting go of his plans to build a landmark hotel on Main Street, Barsotti said he is disappointed.

"I would have liked to have seen it built," he said. "As a tourist town, we need hotel rooms."




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