The city of Durango hosted a neighborhood meeting Wednesday at City Hall where residents were briefed about traffic issues and construction plans for a dual-branded hotel planned in the 400 block of East Second Avenue.
Daniel Murray, city planner, said most feedback about the development from residents has been positive.
It is common to see Marriott hotels built side-by-side, said Mike Ward, with Lamont Cos., the developer. But it is unheard of to see a dual-branded Hampton and Marriott hotel project – until now. The development is the first such project in the country.
Lamont Cos. has received a building permit from the city and is getting ready to place precast concrete foundation walls along the edges of a big hole that was dug four years ago on East Second Avenue. The hole is about 30 feet deep at its deepest location, which backs up to the South Side neighborhood, according to a city handout.
No formal presentation took place Wednesday, but city staff and Ward were present to answer questions.
Ward said the 789 concrete foundation walls are already cast and will be trucked from Denver directly to Durango all at once, although with overnight stops. The tallest walls are 26 feet high and weigh about 50,000 to 60,000 pounds.
Construction will take about 20 to 22 months to complete and will begin in June, he said.
“The Hampton portion will start to be erected in October. So we’ll try to open that around midsummer,” he said. “Marriott will be probably about five months after that.”
Sally Florence, a resident of the 500 block of East Third Avenue, said she is concerned about blind spots along the sidewalk on East Fifth Street on the north and south sides of the development area once the hotels have been erected.
“A lot of people turn left into the one way (East Fifth Street),” she said. “They're going 40-50 mph and turning left on Fifth Street to Third Avenue. There's been more than one T-bone,” she said.
She said the sidewalks on the sides of the hotel(s) should be eliminated, lest a child or a pedestrian – perhaps someone who has had a few margaritas at Gazpacho Restaurant – walks onto Fifth or Fourth streets and is hit by a car that couldn’t see them around the corner of the buildings.
City staff wrote her suggestion down, she said.
She would also like to see a small park installed on the block and intersection of Fifth Street and East Third Avenue, cutting off access to East Third Avenue from Fifth Street.
Bill Perry, another resident of the 500 block of East Third Avenue, said his biggest concern about the hotels is how traffic and parking will be affected.
“I guess you have to wait to see. You can speculate,” he said. Once the hotels go up, then residents can bring their concerns to the city and demonstrate the impacts traffic may be having.
He suggested creating permit-only parking or changing traffic direction or patterns could be solutions to future congested traffic.
Overall, the dual hotel project should be a “real shot-in-the-arm” for the city, he said.
“It'll bring a lot of tourists to the city park residents,” he said. I mean, you have a Marriott downtown with all these businesses? That's a pretty big deal for the city.”
Wade Moore, city parking manager, said parking plans and some landscaping will occur. Some parking places will become parallel spaces versus the diagonal spaces present today. But some areas will lose parking spaces.
About 11 diagonal parking spaces will remain on the north side of Fifth Street between East Second Avenue and the East Third Avenue alleyway. Parking spaces across the street in the same area will be converted to parallel parking spaces, and there will be fewer of them, he said.
On Fourth Street, there will be a loading zone for guests checking into the hotels, plus a few motorcycle parking spaces.
“We're going to lose almost everything (parking) in that half block,” Moore said. “The next half block will allow parallel instead of diagonal. So we lose about 45% of the spaces. So there will be less space. That's been in the plans for four years.”
cburney@durangoherald.com
