Do we really need another major-chain hotel plus a boutique hotel and a restaurant seating 75 shoe-horned into part of a city block? This thing on Second Avenue is huge: 185 rooms and 210 parking spots. Does the city need the extra taxes so badly that it ruins one residential city block by overshadowing all the houses on historic Third Avenue between Fourth and Fifth streets? Everyone’s backyard will be shaded. No one will have any privacy with hotel visitors staring down at them from five stories up. Property values will plummet. My neighbors, who bought and fixed up their houses, will not be able to endure 24 hours of noise, traffic and lights. Families who live there now have said they will sell or move and rent to students. When the last brick is mortared in place on the hotel complex, they will lose half the equity in their homes.
Why is the Third Avenue Historical Board silent about this? Because it’s on the south side of College, who cares? But it sets a precedent for the next block of Second Avenue. How tall is that bank going to be between College and Seventh? Will the Rochester become five stories tall? Will the city decide to make five-story garages of their parking lots? Then Third Avenue will be forever darkened under five-story buildings. Do the residents of Durango really want the town to lose this?
Greg Hoch said people will do anything for money. It’s all about greed.
If the people who live here have loved the look of the residential blocks and want to keep it that way, maybe they should protest the zoning and ask to reconsider scaling back the height to 35 feet for buildings directly behind Third Avenue, and that elevation should be set back 44 feet from the alley lot line of the builder. Otherwise, you will forever lose the beauty and elegance of Third Avenue, and Durango will have destroyed its heritage so a few can just make more money.
Wake up, people. Do something!
Fredette Eagle
Durango
