Document text
Grants Pass hotel proposed adjacent to Taprock Monday Jan 9, 2017 at 12:01 AM By Madeline Shannon of the Daily Courier The word is out about a proposed three-story hotel adjoining the Taprock Event Center in downtown Grants Pass. For several weeks social media has been buzzing about the proposed hotel, most of it positive. The proposal is the subject of a land-use hearing at 2 p.m. Wednesday at City Hall. "Any way to bring in more tourism to our city is a great idea. Our local economy will benefit from this," one commenter posted on Facebook. "Build it!" said another. An application on file at City Hall shows the owners of The Lodge at Riverside want to build a three-story, 24-room hotel adjoining the Taprock Event Center. The application was submitted Nov. 29. Representatives of the Carl Johnson Family Trust, which owns both the Taprock Event Center and The Lodge at Riverside, were unavailable for comment. Under corporate name Country House Inns, the trust also owns the nearby Riverside Inn, on the riverfront west of Sixth Street. Expansion of the privately owned Taprock Event Center, the closest thing the city has to a convention center, is a major undertaking, and not everyone who caught wind of it this week supports such a large construction project bumping up against the residential neighborhood along Southeast Eighth Street. "I'll be drafting up a letter to oppose a 3 story hotel expansion of the Lodge at Riverside," Cindy Meyer-Hunt, posted on Facebook last week. "Would you want it next to your house?" Meyer-Hunt complained that the new construction would increase traffic in her neighborhood, as well as necessitate the cutting down of trees that make the neighborhood attractive. Most commenters were more positive, however. "I think an expansion there could be a great thing," one commenter, Mara Carnes, posted on Facebook. "We need more lodging that we can be proud of in Grants Pass. As someone who has worked on event planning for many years, this expansion is truly needed," another commenter, Debbi Stricklan, wrote. "Okay, an expansion of an existing property that is considered a good neighbor and fairly major employer, sounds like a winner to me," posted Bob Ingram Jr. "It's not a fast food chain, bank or mattress store. Summer tourism brings in lots of revenues." The addresses listed on the planning application form filed at City Hall included 940 and 946 on Southeast Eighth Street, and 940 and 941 on Southeast Seventh Street. The engineer of the project, Max Bondar of ZCS Engineering, said he expects the finished project to make the area look more attractive. "We're going to add more landscaping to the overall development," Bondar explained. "It's going to look a lot nicer and a lot more pretty from an environmental standpoint." Some nearby residents have raised concerns about whether sewer infrastructure in that area can handle the added load. Bondar explained that construction of the new facility would not tap into the city's sewer main, eliminating the possibility of sewer backups at surrounding residential properties. "We have the existing convention sewer stub and we're hooking up the lodgings to that," Bondar said. "There's no way to cause any backups."