Hotel EIR to dive into water

Planning ?Commission ?adds hydrology to impact report|

After hearing from a half-dozen people on June 25, the Sonoma Planning Commission added one additional item to the Environmental Impact Report the developers of a proposed hotel at 153 W. Napa St. need to submit.

The commission was looking at the scope of the EIR that will address the proposal to develop the 62-room hotel and spa with a restaurant and associated parking and site improvements.

The hotel is being proposed by Kenwood Investments. The managing partner in Kenwood Investments is Darius Anderson who is also a principal in Sonoma Media Investments, the owner of the Index-Tribune.

A preliminary report to the commission found that the proposed project may have a significant effect on the environment and an Environmental Impact Report would be required.

The EIR would look at aesthetics, air quality, cultural resources, geology/soils, greenhouse gas emissions, noise, transportation and traffic, utilities and service systems and mandatory findings of significance.

The commission added another section the EIR will have to address – hydrology and water quality. Specifically, a subsection that says, “Would the project: Substantially deplete groundwater supplies or interfere substantially with groundwater recharge such that there would be a net deficit in aquifer volume or a lowering of the local groundwater table level.”

One woman who spoke at the June 25 meeting wanted the Planning Commission to also have the EIR address what she called “the historical building at 153 W. Napa St.” And she said the hotel proposal “needs to be scaled way back.”

Another woman was curious about whether or not there was going to be some sort of traffic mitigation during construction of the project.

And Larry Barnett told the commission that he felt that the comments were falling into a vacuum.

Answering another question about the possible historical significance of the Chateau Sonoma building at 153 W. Napa St., Planning Director David Goodison said that there would be an “independent peer review” on the building.

Jeanne Allen, on the other hand, told the planning panel the city needs to find a way to “make this work.” She said the city needs more hotel rooms because right now, the TOT (transient occupancy tax) “is going elsewhere.”

Allen, who is wheelchair-bound, said the project “goes beyond ADA needs. They added three accessible rooms on the ground floor.”

Commissioner Chip Roberson wanted to know if ADA was part of an EIR. And he wondered about making what he termed “an isolated decision,” pointing out that maybe the panel needs to look at the cumulative impact of a project.

Commission member Robert Felder said he thought it would be irresponsible to eliminate the hydrology section of the EIR. “This will lead to an increased demand on water,” he said.

Goodison told the panel that the groundwater recharge would be 80 percent to 90 percent impervious on the project site. “This isn’t a groundwater recharge area,” he said. And he said that groundwater recharge areas include the area around the Vallejo Home and along the creeks.

“Even if this was not paved, it wouldn’t contribute to groundwater recharge,” he added.

While there were other questions about the EIR including parking, transportation and pedestrians, in the end, the planning commission voted 7-0 to add just the hydrology section to the EIR.

Goodison said the EIR could take about a year, but a draft EIR could be available in six to eight months.

The hotel project was originally proposed in 2012 and called for a 59-room hotel, two ground floor restaurants and 2,800 square feet of retail space. After the Planning Commission and Design Review and Historic Preservation held study sessions in the late summer of 2012, Kenwood Investments placed the project on hold pending the outcome of a ballot initiative that would have limited the size of new hotels in Sonoma to 25 rooms.

The ballot measure, Measure B, was defeated in a November 2013 vote by 92 votes.

After the election, the hotel was reconfigured. Originally, the Index-Tribune building at 117 W. Napa was to be demolished, but it will be saved, although the Chateau Sonoma building at 153 W. Napa St. will be razed for the hotel project.

Originally, the parking was to be at street level with the hotel above, but the proposed hotel calls for 95 underground spaces. Also, the 2012 proposal for two restaurants, a 6,000-square-foot event space and a gym has been revised to one restaurant and the elimination of the event space. The spa/gym will only serve hotel guests.

And in August 2014, the developer added three ground-floor hotel rooms by eliminating the event space. The 2,800-square-foot retail space has also been eliminated.

The look, architecturally, of the hotel has also been modified to an aesthetic that draws from historic architecture in downtown Sonoma.

Once a draft EIR is produced, the Planning Commission will hold a hearing on the draft EIR, and after it’s complete, will take comments and hold a public hearing.

The Sonoma Valley Citizens Advisory Commission will also hold a public hearing on the draft EIR.

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