Hotel developer wants parking rules changed
“Across the country, you have urban hotels that don’t have their own parking and rely on the city infrastructure, and it works fine.”
Raymond Mazzeo, representative for Wellbuilt
STAMFORD — A developer looking to build an extended-stay hotel in Stamford’s downtown argues that 25 off-site parking spaces would be more than enough to accommodate guests, but the city’s zoning regulations need to be changed before it’s allowed.
Tullamore LLC, which is affiliated with Greenwich-based Wellbuilt Company, has requested the text change as part of a proposal to build a 10-story, 99-room hotel with ground-floor restaurant space at the site of what is now a parking lot alongside Curley’s Diner.
Currently, Stamford’s zoning regulations require there to be 0.5 parking spaces per room for regular hotels that are within 500 feet of a public garage in the Center City Zoning District and 0.75 spaces per room for extended-stay hotels.
Wellbuilt wants the Zoning Board to be able to reduce the required parking spaces to 0.25 per room — or one space for every four rooms — for hotels with fewer than 100 rooms in total.
The Planning Board recently voted 3-2 to recommend that the Zoning Board approve the text change as well as Wellbuilt’s proposed site plan.
Raymond Mazzeo of Redniss & Mead laid out Wellbuilt’s applications at a Planning Board meeting last week. Theresa Dell, the chair of the board, asked Mazzeo how the developer decided to propose a reduction from 0.75 to 0.25 — which she said seemed like “quite a jump.”
“It is, and that was supported by our research” of hotels in Stamford and other cities, Mazzeo said. “I mean, really, we would go to zero if we could because we don’t think it’s necessary . ... Across
A study commissioned by WellBuilt found that either one of two private garages “has much more empty parking than the proposed hotel would ever need to accommodate hotel patrons and employees.”
the country, you have urban hotels that don’t have their own parking and rely on the city infrastructure, and it works fine.”
Mazzeo said the developer has been in talks with the city about guests potentially using the public Bell Street Garage. It has also had discussions with the operators of the private parking garages for the office buildings at 1010 and 1055 Washington Boulevard.
A study commissioned by WellBuilt found that either one of the private garages “has much more empty parking than the proposed hotel would ever need to accommodate hotel patrons and employees.”
Mazzeo described office garages, which sit empty at night, as “untapped resources” in the city’s downtown.
“The idea is that we don’t need much more parking, if any, in our downtown. We have plenty,” Mazzeo said. “We just need to start using it more efficiently.”
But some Planning Board members were concerned that the developer didn’t yet have a contract with either of the private garages.
“Can you clarify ... what agreement you’ve made with these buildings?” asked board member Michael Buccino.
“We just have a highlevel understanding,” said Lisa Feinberg, an attorney representing Wellbuilt.
“They said, ‘Sure, we are completely open to that.’”
“So why don’t you guys move forward and sign a contract?” Buccino asked.
“We’re in the very beginning of an approval process,” Feinberg said.
She said at least one of the garages “is absolutely going to work,” and Mazzeo said securing a location would be a condition of approval.
Vice Chair Jay Tepper was still concerned.
“It would seem to me, when it comes time to go on before the Planning Board, that you’d have something locked in, that we would have a more definite knowledge of what parking spaces would be available,” Tepper said.
But board member Jennifer Godzeno called it a chicken-and-egg situation.
“If the development is not approved, then it doesn’t make sense for them to sign in ink to rent a certain number of parking spaces,” she said.
“But we know that there are several thousand parking spaces that are underutilized in the downtown.”
Buccino said he was having trouble supporting a change to the city’s regulations without a broader plan for making spaces in private garages available to non-tenants and marketing their availability.
“Approving something ... for the future and all other applications without actually having those spaces available, to me, it just seems like we’re a little bit ahead of ourselves,” he said.
Dell, Godzeno and Michael Totilo voted to recommend the text change. Buccino and Tepper dissented.
Many of the hotel’s guests would likely come from Stamford’s train station either by foot or ride-hailing, Mazzeo told the board.
The hotel’s lobby would be situated toward the back of the site, and the restaurant would be at the front facing Columbus Park.
In between the lobby and the restaurant would be a covered courtyard for drop-offs and pickups.
Cars would pull into a driveway on the left side of the building to enter the courtyard.
They would then continue to a driveway on the right side of the building to exit to the street.
The property’s right side would also have a “pedestrian corridor” connecting the Summer Street parking garage to West Park Place.
Mazzeo said that under the city’s current regulations, the restaurant wouldn’t be required to provide parking.
But patrons would be able to use public parking garages or on-street parking.
“The developer thought (a hotel and restaurant) was the right use for this space, particularly with the size of the property really not lending itself to a ton of parking and certainly not structured parking,” Mazzeo said about the roughly 12,000-squarefoot site. “One of the thoughts, apart from market factors, was that a hotel use really lends itself better to offsite parking” than a residential use.
“But it will take some amendments to the regulations to get there,” he said.
Mazzeo said the developer has been in touch with two different companies, Mint House and Locale, about potentially operating the hotel.
Curley’s Diner owner Maria Aposporos previously told The Stamford Advocate that she thought the hotel was a good idea and that it could bring more business to the diner.