[M]ONTPELIER — Local hotelier Fred Bashara is planning a new five-story hotel and parking garage in the capital.
“We’re going to construct an 84-room hotel at the rear of our parking lot. Adjacent to that will be a parking structure,” Bashara said at a press conference at the Capitol Plaza Hotel he owns. The new Hampton Inn would be located directly behind the Capitol Plaza.
Construction could begin as early as May and be finished in the spring of 2019, Bashara said. He estimated the construction would employ 50 to 60 workers and that the finished hotel would provide up to 50 new jobs.
The parking garage would fit up to 300 cars, he said.
Gov. Phil Scott praised the $17 million project as an important step in growing the state’s economy. “Businesses owners like the Basharas are important partners in our efforts to do just that,” said Scott, who has set economic growth as a priority for his administration.
The new hotel would bring hundreds of thousands of dollars to the state through the rooms and meals tax and spur economic activity in the area, Scott said.
“Through development such as this, Montpelier will attract new businesses and residents to the area as well as help to reverse our declining population and strengthening our tax base,” Scott said.
The proposed hotel and parking lot are sited adjacent to Montpelier’s planned transit center and housing development.
Montpelier Mayor John Hollar described the projects as part of an economic resurgence in the city. “These two projects are going to complement each other in a really core part of our downtown,” he said. Several housing developments and a distillery are also slated to be built in the upcoming year.
Hollar said it had been part of the city’s economic development planning to encourage the development of a new hotel. In 2014 the city proposed a hotel be included as part of its transit center development, but was met with community resistance, including from the Basharas.
“The Basharas were very much opposed to it and we needed their cooperation to obtain some easements,” said Hollar. That year the Basharas agreed to grant the easements on the condition the city drop plans for a hotel.
At that time Bashara told The Bridge, “I don’t think that this town can support two hotels.” When asked to reconcile that statement with his plans to build the new hotel, Bashara said he had since commissioned a study which found a second hotel would be feasible. “And what, isn’t it better for me to have it than somebody else?” he added.
“We’re glad that somebody we know is going to be developing it,” Hollar said.
The city could have a stake in the proposed parking garage if it helped fund it through through tax increment financing, the mayor said. The city faces the potential loss of up to 200 parking spaces in the next year as a consequence of planned development, he said. “There’s been some discussions about whether we can piggyback on to that parking garage,” Hollar said.
Gregory Rabideau, the lead architect for the project, said the hotel was designed to fit aesthetically with the surrounding buildings, but he anticipates pushback. “I know building size will be of concern to some people — I want to point out that this is a neighborhood where all of Montpelier’s largest buildings are,” Rabideau said.
The developers welcome public input through the environmental permitting and municipal design and development review processes, Rabideau said. Because the development is located in a designated downtown it is exempt from the Act 250 process.
The project will go before Montpelier’s Design Review Committee at 5:30 p.m. on Monday, Nov. 20, and before the Development Review board at 7 p.m. on Dec. 4. Both meetings will be held in the Montpelier City Hall.
