Proposed hotel’s neighbors worry about development

A proposal for a five-story hotel adjoining the quiet neighborhood around Velma Road has drawn criticism from the area’s residents, many of whom expressed their concerns at a Chapel Hill Town Council public hearing last month.

The proposed hotel would be located at 1609 E. Franklin St. and would have 110 rooms, according to the concept plan submitted to the Chapel Hill Town Council by HPW Properties, LLC.

The location already has a special use permit from 2009 for a business space and parking spaces. To build a hotel on the property, the company would likely need a special use permit modification and a rezoning.

The Siena Hotel sits at 1505 E. Franklin St., on the same block as the proposed hotel. Anthony Carey, who manages the Siena, said another hotel in such close proximity would be an economic burden rather than a benefit.

“You’d create oversaturation,” he said. “Even during Super Bowl events and (UNC) Parents’ Weekend the current supply of hotel rooms does not sell out. At some point, if you create so much supply, the rates (for hotel rooms) will be decreased.”

Carey said lower hotel room rates would mean less taxable revenue for the town.

Dwight Bassett, economic development officer for the town of Chapel Hill, said though the area around Velma Road may be saturated with hotels, there are other locations in Chapel Hill where new hotel accommodations would be welcome.

“It is a fact that we do lose rooms to Durham,” he said.

Residents who live in the Velma Road neighborhood said the large building would be unsightly and out of place.

“It’s a single-family residential area, and the back of the hotel faces a road that is one of the first arteries into that residential area,” said Joel Fleishman, a Duke University professor whose home sits close to where the hotel would be located.

“There’s always the possibility of spillover of traffic and parking that would increase noise in the area,” he said. “It is something that is inconsistent with the character of that neighborhood.”

Shauna Farmeris also a resident of the neighborhood. After hearing about the hotel, she went to the potential building site and made measurements of the two-story ballet school located next to the site. Then she compared those measurements to the developers’ scale drawings of the proposed building to see how much larger the hotel would be than the school.

“I went back to my high school geometry to find out how tall the building really was, to make sure I wasn’t imagining things and worried about nothing,” she said. “But it was quite a bit bigger.”

She concluded that the proposed hotel would be 18 feet taller than the ballet school.

Farmer said the new building would most directly affect people like Fleishman whose homes are located directly across from the site.

“My house isn’t on Velma, but those are still my neighbors,” she said.

“They expressed uniformly that they are opposed and we are supporting them in their opposition.”

Fleishman said the new hotel would not be congruent with the history and purpose of the Velma Road residential area.

“Typically, Chapel Hill has preserved the integrity of single-family zoned areas,” Fleishman said.

“That has contributed to the attractiveness of Chapel Hill as place where people can buy homes and expect them to keep same character as when they moved in.”

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