Hotel vote set for Sept. 17

BLYTHEWOOD – After not receiving a vote from the planning commission last week for lack of a quorum of commission members, representatives of Hilton Hotel’s Home 2 Suites will have another go at it on Monday evening.

The hotel chain is seeking the commission’s approval to situate a hotel on a 1.93-acre parcel located behind San Jose’s restaurant and adjacent to I-77. The building is proposed to be four stories with 88 beds.

The representatives must also meet with the Board of Architectural Review (BAR) before they can receive a Certificate of Occupancy. To eliminate an extra trip, Town Hall arranged for them to meet with both boards on Sept. 17. The BAR will meet at 6 p.m. and the planning commission at 7 p.m. at the Manor.

The request first came before the commission in early August but was deferred by the commission until the September meeting so the commissioners’ concerns regarding what they considered problematic traffic access to the hotel off Blythewood Road could be resolved.

Town Administrator Brian Cook said last month that Town Hall staff had been working with SCDOT on the issue and that SCDOT had conditionally granted access to the site using SCDOT’s right of way.

While those attending the Tuesday evening meeting were waiting for enough planning commissioners to arrive for a quorum, engineer Jeff Carter, representing the hotel chain, reviewed for the commissioners the conclusions of a traffic study conducted by Seneca engineer Roger Dyar which stated that the overall effects on the peak hour traffic flow on the hotel access are minimal.

The report recommended that the proposed site’s access plan should be approved since the increase in traffic will result in only very minor additions to delays and queues in the study network.

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