SMITHFIELD – The Town Council has made way for a largerhotel to be built on a long-vacant parcel at the intersection of Routes 7 and 116.
Hotels of up to 150 rooms are now allowed within the town’s Economic Growth Overlay District (EGOD), after the Town Council on Tuesday narrowly approve amendments to the town’s zoning ordinance on hotel room thresholds within such districts upward from 100 rooms.
Much of the May 5 discussion, which ended in a 3-2 partisan split vote to approve, revolved around what leaders and residents want this area of Smithfield to be. Opponents suggested that a planned extended-stay hotel will lead to more crime for a town with a police department without the resources to take it on, and proponents saying that this is the most common sense form of economic development to allow.
Council President John Tassoni said that if the council didn’t allow this switch from allowing 100 rooms within the EGOD to 150 rooms, they might as well put up signs that say Smithfield is closed for business.
Councilor Michael Iannotti, who voted with fellow Republican Rachel Toppi against the move, asked Director of Planning and Economic Development Gregory Guertin whether he’d reviewed statistics on crime related to town hotels, and Guertin responded that while he’s seen data, that information wasn’t pertinent to what they were tasked with reviewing.
Responding to Councilor Angelica Bovis, who voted with colleaguesTassoni and Tom Winfield for the change, Guertin confirmed that all other aspects of local rules will stay the same, including on setbacks, size requirements, frontage, and others.
Attorney John Revens Jr. for the applicant behind the proposed hotel at 235 George Washington Highway, noted that the EGOD was originally designed for expedited permitting of mixed-use development. This property covers about 250,000 square feet, he said, encouraging the council to approve the simple change on maximum number of rooms.
Revens said the square footage of this hotel would be smaller than existing 100-room hotel in town, as it won’t have a pool, dining room, or other facilities that lose money. That will allow the company to invest millions of dollars into creating quality rooms at competitive prices, he said.
Greg Heflin, regional vice president for real estate and land acquisitions for Sunburst Hospitality Corp/Park Silver Development, which builds hotels under various names, said their prototype store is 122 rooms, and this one will be similar. He said most hotels they’re competing with now are between 124 and 137 rooms.
Toppi asked about why they’re looking at this area for the hotel, and he said there was plenty of due diligence done to show that the demand will be there. He told Toppi that he expects rates for rooms to be $200 for one night, but if someone is staying for months, they’ll get a better deal. He said they will not be leasing space to other entities.
Answering on the types of people they’re looking to have stay here, he said it would be corporate types doing training for a week or two, those working on construction projects, military, traveling nurses, or people moving to the area who are building a house but need a place to stay temporarily.
Iannotti asked if they would proceed without approval of the change, and Heflin said no, the model simply wouldn’t work.
Several residents, including Cynthia Mulvey, expressed concern over what the hotel will do to an already overtaxed police force. She said the department doesn’t need the added stress and strain of transitory activity and “the anonymity of a rental.”
Resident Kenneth Souza, of the Budget and Financial Review Board, told the council he was more concerned at that point in the meeting than when he first walked in. He said officials know the issues that have happened at other hotels on Route 7, and he doesn’t want to see those same problems extending here. Souza said he will save many of his concerns to express them at the development plan review stage. He said traffic and speeding area also already a problem here.
Souza said he just wants this part of town to be safe.
Iannotti agreed with Souza, saying they previous had to add more officers because of the issues at hotels.
Councilor Angelica Bovis cited police calls over five years, saying hotel calls accounted for, at the very most, three tenths of one percent of all police calls in town. She said she’s not saying that’s insignificant, but many of the calls were for motor vehicle stops, accidents, and work details, seemingly brought on because the “traffic pattern is atrocious” at the intersection.
For crime statistics, Bovis said there were 2,200 calls over five years, 66 of them for suspicious activity, four for drugs, 21 for disturbances or domestic incidents, six for vandalism, four for assault, and 30 for disorderly conduct. She said she’s willing to bet there are more shoplifting incidents at Smithfield Commons than disorderly incidents at the hotels.
The data simply doesn’t lie, Bovis added, and she sees this proposal as a positive for a town that changed this zoning 11 years ago but is still looking at an “empty, treeless, barren corner.” The landscape in town has changed, she said, and officials should be encouraging development in areas that make sense, rather than cutting down trees or disturbing the “ghosts of Hanton City.”
Resident Dennis Woisard said he found the conversation opposing the development to border on absurd. He said perhaps opponents would like to see the property owner put the trees back up, suggesting that they might as well tell Bryant University not to build any more dorms.
Bovis made the motion to adopt the change, which was followed by more comments. Toppi said she was struggling to understand why they needed to increase the number to 150 for an entire zone. She said she’s not inherently against development, and that developers have the right to develop, but the council was deliberating without the occupancy rates they asked for and she doesn’t see the benefit to Smithfield with hotels already in the area. She said applicants should comply with existing zoning.
Iannotti said officials shouldn’t be tailoring zoning to specific projects, but the other way around. He said the administration is clearly for this project, not even wanting the police chief there to answer questions about crime, adding that he thinks this project will end up costing the town money.
Tassoni pointed to the $1.4 million the town takes in in food and hotel taxes every year, and with this hotel only having residential rooms, he would expect that figure to balloon above $2 million annually with all the tenants going to surrounding restaurants. Everyone’s always saying Smithfield doesn’t have enough money to do this or that, said Tassoni, and if they’re going to keep opposing development, they might as well just advertise that businesses aren’t welcome here.
Bovis said the property has been vacant for more than a decade, and she doesn’t like driving by and seeing it vacant. She said she would love to see it bring new vibrancy to the area, and the council should support bringing businesses into town to support the local economy.
The council then voted 3-2 to approve the change.
