A Florida-based investment firm has submitted sketch plans to build a hotel at the current Greater Burlington YMCA location on College Street.
Hospitality Funding, under the business name Hotel Y Burlington, is planning a six-story, 142-room Cambria hotel, one of 10 brands owned by Choice Hotels. The company also operates Comfort Inn, Clarion, Econo Lodge and others, according to its website.
But Hospitality Funding’s chairman and CEO has Queen City ties, according to Nicole Ravlin, a spokesperson for the hotel. Scott Silver attended the University of Vermont as an undergrad, and his son lives in BTV, she said. Silver will serve as the Burlington project’s managing partner.
“Vermont is kind of his home away from home, and this is why he was interested in doing something with the community here,” Ravlin said.
More detailed plans will be unveiled at Wednesday’s Wards 1 and 8 Neighborhood Planning Assembly meeting, said Scott Gustin, a principal planner with the city of Burlington. Silver and Cleary Buckley of Smith Buckley Architects are scheduled to attend and answer questions.
Silver said his firm “assumed the contract” for the property at 266 College Street last October from Montpelier lawyer Frank von Turkovich, who signed a contract to buy the historic building in 2016. City records show the property sold for $3 million; it was originally on the market for $3.75 million.
Smith Buckley Architects filed a memo with the NPA that says the hotel will retain the Y’s gabled roof structure at the corner of College and South Union streets but will demolish the building’s back portion. Designs also call for 77 underground parking spaces, a rooftop bar and restaurant and a “green/vegetated roof with kinetic art.”
“We anticipate that this feature will provide an inviting destination for the community, offering an experience that does not currently exist in the city,” the architect’s memo says of the rooftop features.
The hotel will be built to sustainable design standards and will include its own stormwater retention system, the architects’ memo says.
The firm predicts the hotel will reduce traffic congestion at the intersection since guest turnover happens throughout the day “versus the highly concentrated pickup and drop off” times for the Y’s childcare program.
Meanwhile, the Burlington Y is continuing construction on its new home a block away at 298 College Street, site of the former Ethan Allen Club. The Y will continue operating at its current location until the new building is complete, likely by early 2020. Hotel construction is slated to commence that spring, the architects’ memo says.
The hotel must first pass design and development reviews, however. Those hearings are tentatively planned for later this month, Gustin said.
Jonathan Chapple-Sokol, a Wards 1 and 8 NPA steering committee member, said he hasn’t reviewed the hotel’s specific plans but anticipates the NPA meeting will host a robust discussion.
“I have an open mind about these things,” he said. “There’s a lot of interested people in the ward who come to the NPA. It may not be as exciting as others, but I think there will definitely be some good Q&A.”
The NPA will meet at 6:45 p.m. Wednesday in the UVM Medical Center’s McClure Lobby Conference Room.
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You’re close. As long as you are complying with current zoning regulations (and others) then you can pretty much do whatever you want with the property. We as voters have a say in in what those regulations are and who we elect to change them for certain projects.
That’s not really my point, though. I was simply asking the developer and those involved in this project to be honest instead of pretending they were truly interested in doing what was in the best interest of Burlington by claiming they are freeing up traffic and providing “an experience that does not currently exist in the city.”
I’d settle for, “it’s my building and I will be working with the mayor to zone it so I can make as much money as possible off it without having to touch the existing structure which is grandfathered into some regulations so I don’t have to pay to bring it up to code” or something along those lines which is closer to the truth.
“but we can also do better than a hotel”
“We”?
“We” do not own the property. Wanna decide what “we” should do with it? Then buy it. Then you can donate it to the city for any cause that makes you feel good. But in the meantime you do not own it. We do not own it. The city of Burlington does not own it. A private party owns it. As long as I’m complying with current zoning regulations, Burlingtonians need to stop just assuming that they get to decide what I will do with my property. I wanna paint my house pink? My business, not yours. I wanna build a hotel? My business, not yours.
My comment was more focused on how this project is being spun rather than the project itself. Yes, I’d like a project to go in that benefits more than just the developer. Burlington needs better paying jobs, more housing, etc. It would be nice to have some professionals downtown rather than the various slovenly dressed college kids manning the shops and restaurants and serving as punching bags for the police but in the absence of that project this hotel is what we have. Yes, it is better than leaving the pile of asbestos that is the old Y there but we can also do better than a hotel whose main benefit seemingly is to reduce traffic in an area that is virtually undrivable anyway because of potholes and poorly planned structures that carve out bike lanes. I’m not sure if the architect has actually been around Burlington but a hotel with a restaurant is not exactly …an experience that does not currently exist in the city,
Something needs to be done with the old Y. Somebody paid $3 million for it. Just be honest with what you are doing there.
*We need housing, not hotels*
Everyone agrees with you that Burlington needs housing. So why dont you borrow money and build a housing development?
Oh, but if you can get a bank to back your project, be prepared for the land costs, the planning costs, the years-long permitting process, the zoning process, Act 250, the low-income set-asides and mandates, the historic preservation, the anti-development obstruction, and the construction costs, all of which will actually make your housing project economically unfeasible in housing-strapped Burlington. But if you get through all that, then be prepared also for for the lawsuits by the same handful of obstructionist Burlingtonians and their obstructionist attorney, who claim we need housing but who wont let anyone build any, and who exist to sue anybody whos gotten a permit to build anything.
Uff, can people be really that upset about taking a really dumpy (not on the outside) not-for-profit building that pays minimal taxes and replacing it with a private hotel that would generate significantly more taxes for the city of Burlington? We run a very expensive form of local government for the size of our city. We need more business tax payers to keep the pressure off the locals who pay more than two times the national average in property taxes per $1,000 of assessed value. National average is between 1.1% and 1.2% and Burlingtonians pay 2.6%. Also no one is being displaced and there’s a new, better Y on deck just up the street. People need to stop complaining about every development that comes down the pike and think about the cost of doing nothing on that same spot that’s underutilized in a city that has ambitious social/environmental/housing policy goals without the means to fund them.
https://www.burlingtonvt.gov/CT/propertyta…