Hotel company looks at site next to restaurant
By Anessa Myers
Published in News on August 27, 2008 1:52 PM
Goldsboro lost the Days Inn motel on U.S. 70 in a windstorm last August, but new lodging might be on the way.
The Planning Commission approved a site and landscape plan Monday night for a three-story, 44,730-square-foot hotel next to the Ruby Tuesday restaurant on North Park Drive.
The proposed hotel will likely be a Fairfield Inn and Suites with 86 rooms, city planning officials said.
Commission members weren't sure whether the land would accommodate that large of a hotel structure, but the logistics of the building and the structure itself will be up to the engineers of the project, they said.
"I never expected a hotel to try to fit into that area," commission Chairman Chris Boyette said.
The plan was approved with several modifications, including a decrease in the number of necessary parking spaces and about a 7-foot-difference in the requirement of space from the front of the building to the road. The commission did not approve a requested modification to waive interconnectivity -- easily accessible off-street traffic flow from one business to the next -- of the site with Ruby Tuesday.
Commission members also approved a final plat modification for the Carolina Forest subdivision located on Sheridan Forest Road.
City planning officials required that the roadways in the subdivision be paved to city standards with 3 inches of asphalt over 6 inches of stone. The roads of three small cul-de-sacs weren't paved to the standards of the city but were completed to state Department of Transportation standards with 2 inches of asphalt over 9 inches of soil.
City planning officials said they require more stringent specifications for new subdivisions, even outside of the city limits, in case the area is annexed in the future, but said they would recommend a compromise if the developer added an inch of asphalt. Commission members didn't believe the extra inch would do much good.
"It's between keeping the developer happy and being cost-effective," Boyette said of the situation, since paving roadways to more stringent specifications costs more money.
City planning officials said the area is not close to being annexed, that city officials have merely put it in a latter phase.
"This is an ETJ (extraterritorial jurisdiction) issue, and even if it is going to be annexed in the future, I have a hard time going against the developer here," Boyette said.
In other business, members approved five items that were brought to the City Council's Aug. 18 meeting as public hearing items, including two rezoning requests, two conditional use permits and the change of the street named Spring Court to Granville Court as well as four other site and landscape plans.
Auto Investments LLC requested to change property on the southwest corner of North Oak Forest Road and Summit Road from general business to highway business, and Kathy Woodard requested to change property on the north side of East Ash Street between Piedmont Airline Road and Oak Forest Road from residential to neighborhood business.
A conditional use permit was requested by Bobby Reavis for property on the north side of East Ash Street between Daisy and William streets to allow for modifications of a previously approved request for operation of a used car lot.
William Painter also requested a conditional use permit to allow a day care to operate at property located on the south side of Summit Road between North Oak Forest Road and Berkeley Boulevard.
The public hearing items will be decided upon for final approval by the City Council at its next meeting on Sept. 2.