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Hotel adjacent to the Rogue River gets approval Thursday Jan 26, 2017 at 4:55 PM By Troy Shinn Grants Pass Daily Courier GRANTS PASS — Plans by The Lodge at Riverside to build a three-story, 24-room hotel near the Rogue River were approved Wednesday. The plans originally included expanded use of the existing Taprock Event Center, a stand-alone building already on the property that can be rented out to the public. Under the amended proposal, the event center would be used only for events involving the hotel and its patrons. The decision to change this part of the plan came after opposition by neighbors, who said it would create issues for their neighborhood along the Rogue River in terms of transportation, neighborhood aesthetics and property values. "Putting three-stories in a one- to two-story neighborhood is like putting an elephant in a bathtub," said Arden McConnell, a neighbor who lives on Southeast Eighth Street. "It would lower our property values and affect the views of the river." Max Bondar of ZCS Engineering said the decision to scale back use of the event center was done as a sign of good will to neighbors. "We made a compromise," said Bondar, lead engineer on the project. "We didn't have to because we had city approval for the whole project, but we chose to accommodate the neighbors." Bondar represents the Carl Johnson Family Trust, which also owns the nearby Riverside Inn, part of a tourism-oriented district along the Rogue that includes Hellgate Jetboat Excursions and the Taprock Northwest Grill. Hearings officer Duane Schultz, a local attorney, approved the project, saying the application met all the city's requirements for use and zoning. The change in plans may address some of the concerns neighbors had about parking along Eighth Street and access issues on the city street. "By incorporating the event center into the hotel, it will help alleviate the need for extensive parking," said Lora Glover, the city's director of Parks and Community Development. An Oregon Department of Transportation survey concluded that the expansion would not pose serious transportation or parking problems. The application includes more parking spaces to accommodate the extra patrons. The application review also included a sewer utility assessment which likewise found that added rooms and patron activity would not pose a serious risk to neighbors. "This applicant has gone out of their way to address the concerns of the neighborhood, and I want to commend them for that," Schultz said at the hearing. "My job is to determine whether the criteria for this application have been met or not. I am here to say that they have." Bondar said the company tried to keep the events center open to the public, but ultimately the developers decided to address the parking concerns with the event center. "Now it's just a waiting game," Bondar said. "The opposition has 12 days to appeal the approval decision and then the planner from the city decides whether to grant it. It's unfortunate because we made the decision to withdraw that events center in order to prevent an appeal, but I've heard that the neighbors are going to appeal anyway." Ideally, said Bondar, he'd like to break ground on the project in spring 2018. Schultz said that while neighborhood concerns were valid, most of the issues being raised were not things that are the responsibility of the developers. These include concerns such as transient activity in the area, an issue which Schultz said "is not unique to one neighborhood in Grants Pass, and should be addressed at the community level." Schultz continued that aesthetic concerns are something that are constantly coming up when new commercial developments go in next to established neighborhoods. "Some of these neighbors are living in the houses their parents lived in, and that's an important part of the heritage of Grants Pass," Schultz said. "But we have to strike the best deal to mitigate impacts between both parties."