Earlier approved hotel in downtown comes back for review at larger size

A large hotel planned in downtown Redwood City that received the go-ahead in 2017 is coming back for additional review after 21 guest rooms were added.

Viren Patel, whose family owns the Garden Hotel at 1690 Broadway, plans to demolish the aging 17-room hotel and replace it with a 112-room Holiday Inn & Suites geared at corporate clients. It would be the city’s third-largest hotel behind Pullman San Francisco Bay (421 rooms) and Courtyard by Marriott Redwood City (177 rooms).

The original plan was for Holiday Inn & Suites to have 91 guest rooms and an underground parking garage, but Patel said the garage proved too costly. The parking spaces will now be housed inside the building on the ground floor, with cars parked using hydraulic stackers, and the hotel will rise from four to five stories.

“It will be the same height as other buildings nearby, and the footprint is the same,” he said Thursday.

Trying to be mindful of traffic concerns, Patel said the hotel will use valet service and will encourage the use of rideshare services. He also plans to put in a charging station at Beech Street and Broadway for electric bicycles and scooters.

“The front of the property will have a rideshare dedication, and on the other side of Beech Street, we’ll have a staging area for valets that will park the cars,” he said.

The project will be reviewed and possibly approved at the Architectural Advisory Committee meeting that begins at 6:30 p.m. Thursday.

Patel said he anticipates beginning demolition work in March and spending up to 18 months for construction.

Investing $5 million saved from not building the garage and adding 21 rooms will help keep room rates competitive with hotels nearby, Patel said. Nightly rates are expected to be $200 to $220 Monday through Thursday, and $100 to $150 Friday through Sunday.

The hotel, he said, intends to make the bulk of its revenue serving three large projects underway nearby: Stanford’s Redwood City campus at Broadway and Douglas Avenue that is expected to open in March; Kaiser Permanente’s new medical office building under construction at 1175 Marshall St.; and Sobrato Organization’s planned Broadway Plaza office and housing project at Broadway and Woodside Road.