Planning Commission review of downtown hotel cancelled

Next step in 62-room West Napa project process is Dec. 8 commission meeting; now delayed.|

EDITOR'S NOTE: The City of Sonoma today announced that the Planning Commission meeting scheduled for tonight, Dec. 8, has been cancelled and will be rescheduled, due to what they called "a potentially significant flaw in the traffic analysis." More details to follow.

The proposed 62-room hotel on West Napa Street comes before the City of Sonoma Planning Commission on Thursday, Dec. 8, as the next step in the permitting process. The meeting was originally scheduled for last month, Nov. 3, but was delayed by City Planning Director David Goodison who thought the community needed more time to evaluate the project and its potential impacts.

“We feel it is necessary to allow everyone involved sufficient time to make informed comments and decisions,” Goodison said upon the cancellation. Though he said the delay was entirely at his discretion, it may have been motivated by the fact that the original date was only a week after an Oct. 26 hearing before the Sonoma Valley Citizens Advisory Commission.

At that meeting, the SVCAC voted its approval of the project by a narrow 5-4 majority, though the full advisory board was not in attendance. Issues of traffic, water use and sewer impacts, and the overall scale of the project were addressed at the SVCAC meeting, as they were in the Final EIR, but comments on those and potentially other concerns may be raised at the Planning Commission's own evaluation of the EIR.

The “Hotel Project Sonoma,” as the Environmental Impact Report identifies it, would be built at 117, 135 and 153 W. Napa St. as a three-story 62-room hotel. The project includes an 80-seat restaurant, an 8-room spa, and 115 parking spaces, most of which would be underground.

The primary entrance would be off West Napa Street between the Lynch Building (where Umpqua National Bank is) and the proposed restaurant at 153 W. Napa St., where Sonoma Brands is currently located. The primary three-story hotel building would be where most of the present-day parking lot is. The underground parking lot access ramp would be behind the Lynch Building, and would exit onto First Street West, next to a small staff and valet parking lot.

The proposed hotel, originally called Chateau Sonoma & Spa in its first, more ambitious iteration, is being built by Kenwood Investments. Darius Anderson, the founder and principal owner of Kenwood Investments, is a partner in Sonoma Media Investments, the company that owns the Index-Tribune.

The commission meets at 6:30 p.m. at the Community Meeting Room, 177 First St. W., Sonoma. For more information and EIR documentation, go online to sonomacity.org/government/resources/reports.aspx.

Email Christian at christian.kallen@sonomanews.com.

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