Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Hotel deliberations reach deadlock

Developers aren’t willing to provide workforce housing


By TREVON MILLIARD
Express Staff Writer

This rendering shows the proposed Bald Mountain Lodge from behind the corner of Washington Avenue and River Street.Courtesy graphic

The Ketchum City Council spent nearly nine hours Thursday evening and Friday morning wrestling with developers over requirements for allowing the proposed Bald Mountain Lodge to be built on Main Street. But the one-two punch of meetings proved insufficient to reach any compromises.

Deliberations ended in a stalemate, mostly due to the developers' intransigence about providing workforce housing, and the council's questioning if it should enforce its code requiring the hotel's fourth and fifth floors to step back from the property line more than they do.

All new hotels are required to provide employee housing for at least 25 percent of their workers—meaning 22 employees in the case of this 87-room hotel with 26 residential units—but Bald Mountain Lodge project manager Jim Garrison said housing would be "unfinanceable" on or off site. He, and other developers of the project, said the housing requirement should be waived.

Even if it financially made sense, attempts of pushing housing on employees "doesn't work," said Tim Estes of RockResorts, the company that would manage the hotel. RockResorts manages the Hotel Jerome in Aspen, Colo., the Pines Lodge in Beaver Creek, Colo., and several other luxury resort hotels.

Estes said he's learned that even when housing is made available in the immediate area, employees "tend" to prefer housing farther away that fits them and is often cheaper.

"As employers, we'll decide the best solution," he said, adding that this sometimes means paying workers travel stipends for their commutes. "Locking us into a solution is wrong."

But, Mayor Randy Hall said, travel stipends for commuting defeats the point.

"Paying someone to drive their paycheck out of the community doesn't benefit Ketchum," Hall said.

He said workers who live in the city cash their paychecks there, keeping money cycling through the economy. He said it's not just about the economy but quality of life. Workers won't be spending an hour or two driving every day, and they'd be more involved in the community because they live there.

Councilmen Larry Helzel and Baird Gourlay expressed similar opinions, saying the requirement could be postponed until after construction to spread out developers' costs.

"We can work on creative solutions," Helzel said, "but I wouldn't expect us to waive."

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To that, developers had no compromising response. The issue was left as high up in the air as it was when the meetings started. But developers still asked for a final vote on the hotel at the close of Friday's meeting, to which the council unanimously stated that it wasn't even close to being ready.

The response of Mike Kerby, owner of the Bald Mountain property between First and River streets, hinted that no compromise would come on the developers' part. He said the important thing is that the hotel would bring nearly 200 jobs.

"It comes down to (whether the city wants) jobs or housing," he said.

As for the other issue of upper-floor setbacks, Ketchum code allows a 68-foot-tall building at the lodge's location, but requires fourth and fifth floors bordering streets to be set back from the property line by a minimum of 10 feet, with an average of 15 feet per street side.

Lodge designer Gary Wakatsuki argued that the top two floors both step back 8 feet, just 2 feet shy of the minimum. But, Councilman Curtis Kemp said, that's not how it will appear from the ground because the roof juts out almost to the property line along First Street, which is what matters. Wakatsuki's 8-foot setback refers to the glass doors leading to the balconies.

"The sky is still blocked," Kemp said, and the intent of the ordinance is to allow as much light onto the street and sidewalk as possible. "The setback could be 30 feet, and it wouldn't matter."

This also concerned the Planning and Zoning Commission, which narrowly approved the lodge's design in a 3-2 vote mostly because of the setback issue.

Kemp said he doesn't know if the setbacks are a breaking point for him, especially since First Street is the only side where the building dominates the property line. He said it's just something he needs to "mull over."

None of the other council members expressed strong opinions on Thursday or Friday concerning the setbacks, but they will need to make up their minds by April 19 at 5:30 p.m. when they reconvene and potentially come to a decision on whether to allow a planned-unit development for the hotel.

Landowner Kerby said he needs an answer soon. He said Wells Fargo bank is financing the $50 million project but is "concerned" that the project has "stalled."

"We've spent $10 million to date and haven't turned a shovel," he said.

Helzel said he is "anxious" to reach a vote but cautioned everyone that this hotel would have the largest visual impact of any of the proposed new hotels in Ketchum—Warm Springs Ranch Resort or the 100-foot-tall River Run hotel—since it would sit on Main Street.

"I'm interested in getting it right and not just getting it done," he said.

Trevon Milliard: tmilliard@mtexpress.com

Fiscal impact on city

A fiscal-impact analysis done by Randy Young of consultant firm Henderson, Young & Co. found that Bald Mountain Lodge would be a benefit to the city government of $274,000 during construction, but didn't calculate the effect on the area's economy. Young said the city government would break even every year after that concerning the lodge, but the city's Urban Renewal Agency would make $218,000 annually after construction completion until 2030 from the property taxes. The URA will end in 2030.




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