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The Council for America's First Freedom wants to join with Richmond-based Apple REIT companies to build a complex at Cary and 14th streets that would have 200 hotel rooms and the council's long-planned First Freedom Center.
Project officials are considering asking the city for permission to build up to 110 feet -- well above the 60-foot limit allowed under current zoning. The development would need a special-use permit from the City Council as well as approval from the Commission of Architectural Review.
The parking lot at Cary and 14th was the site of the state Capitol in 1786, when the legislature approved a law guaranteeing religious freedom for all citizens.
Neither First Freedom nor Apple, a group of four related real-estate investment trusts that together own 172 hotels worth about $3 billion, would comment yesterday on the project's potential financing. Glade M. Knight, Apple's chairman and chief executive, is a member of the council's board.
Apple declined to comment at all on its plans, but the council said it hopes to have the hotels and First Freedom Center, with exhibits and education space, open in 2010. So far, a few renderings but no development proposal has been filed with the city.
"I think if we can get more people down here, everybody would welcome that," said David Napier, who owns the Old City Bar on East Main Street in Shockoe Bottom.
Tom Leppert, owner of Sam Miller's restaurant and president of Historic Shockoe Partnership, a neighborhood association, said the proposal is the best his group has seen floated by the council in the last few years.
Members of the association, mostly small businesses and property owners in Shockoe Slip, have worked informally for the past 25 years to ensure that development doesn't overwhelm the neighborhood's historic buildings and cobblestone streets.
Their main concern is the potential height of the hotels. Leppert said neighbors want to limit any new building to 65 feet in height -- roughly six or seven stories and comparable to the Bowers Building, the Slip's tallest. Because the First Freedom site drops sharply toward 14th street, there is room for discussion, Leppert said.
Richmond City Councilman Bruce W. Tyler, a principal with Baskervill, the project's architect, engineer and interior design consultant, said he believes the project's scale is being handled with sensitivity. The hotels would be limited to three or four stories immediately along Cary Street, but they would reach about 110 feet -- approximately nine stories -- toward the rear of the block, he said.
"From an architectural standpoint, because it steps back, it's not going to have the [negative] visual impact," said Tyler, who does not plan to participate in council's review or vote on the project.
He said the plans call for a 120-room Courtyard hotel and an 80-room extended-stay Residence Inn, which he said would be ideal for lawmakers and lobbyists in town for General Assembly sessions. Neither would have a restaurant.
"You're going to have 200-plus folks every night looking for dining," Tyler said. "This enhances and compliments what's in place" in Shockoe Slip and Shockoe Bottom.
Another concern is where cars would enter a proposed two-level, 160-space underground parking lot, particularly if access is proposed along Cary, Leppert said. He said neighbors generally aren't worried about the additional traffic because the developer isn't seeking relief from current limits on parking.
"We want to preserve the fabric of this historic area," said Mike Byrne, director of operations at Richbrau Brewing Co. in Shockoe Slip.
He believes the project could be an economic boon for the area and the rest of downtown. "One thing we are short on in the city is hotels," he said.
The Shockoe Slip area has several hotels, including The Berkeley Hotel, with 54 rooms; the Commonwealth Park Suites Hotel, with 59 rooms; and the Omni Richmond Hotel, with 361 rooms, according to Richmond Metropolitan Convention & Visitors Bureau.
For the first half of 2008, hotels in the downtown area plus those near Richmond International Airport had an occupancy rate of about 64 percent -- a drop from 66 percent for the same period last year, according to Smith Travel Research.
Contact David Ress at (804) 649-6051 dress@timesdispatch.com.
Contact Will Jones at (804) 649-6911 or wjones@timesdispatch.com.
To see more of the Richmond Times-Dispatch, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.timesdispatch.com. Copyright (c) 2008, Richmond Times-Dispatch, Va. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
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