Proposed hotel on the agenda
Charlottetown city council is taking a proposed six-storey hotel on Capital Drive to a public meeting on Tuesday night.
DP Murphy Hotels and Resorts wants to erect a six-storey Hampton Inn & Suites hotel on 4.5 acres between the Maypoint roundabout and North River Road. The hotel is one of four separate issues that council will hear public comments on. The meeting begins at 7 p.m. at the Rodd Charlottetown.
The applicant is perfectly within its rights to construct a four-storey hotel but is asking the city for a site-specific amendment to the highway commercial zone to add another two storeys.
The overall parcel of land is about seven acres, bounded to the north by Capital Drive, Maypoint Road to the west, C-2 zoned land to the east, R-3 zoned multi-unit dwellings and R-1 zoning to the south.
Also on the agenda at Tuesday’s public meeting is 15 Hillsborough St. The owner of that property is requesting an amendment that would see the property zoned to downtown mixed use neighbourhood.
Ray Campbell is the owner of the property and, for those who don’t recall, was the subject of a story in The Guardian last August. He had taken the walls out of an old home and found it was one of the city’s oldest log homes, possibly dating back to the 1700s.
Now, Campbell wants to have the tiny property rezoned to permit a small eating and drinking establishment.
“He’s hoping to put in a café (and) a deck on the back of the house and do the inside of the house over,’’ said Coun. Greg Rivard, chairman of the city’s planning committee.
Usually in these cases, the city prefers to see plans first and is leery of just granting rezoning requests on demand in case the property owned ultimately decides to sell and something ultimately goes in there that isn’t conducive to the neighbourhood.
The property at 49 Kensington Rd. is also on the list of topics. The vacant building, directly across from Eastlink Centre, used to be home to a dentists’ office.
The owner wants to consolidate two properties (seniors/ community home) and create additional parking.
And, the properties at 55 and 59 Richmond St. will be discussed. Charlottetown developer Tim Banks wants to build a four-storey, 23-unit apartment building right next to an existing condominium building.
Banks is looking for council to grant him a variance to reduce the right minimum side yard setback from six feet to less than a foot and a variance to reduce the minimum grade level height from 13 feet to about 9.5 feet.