Hoity-toity hotel gets the town council go-ahead

Thursday, July 24, 2008

By Jake Nichols

Jackson Wyo.-With the directive to find more parking, figure out the alleyway, and house more employees, the Mills Hotel Wyoming development team returned to the table with yet another revised version of their monster, 151,000-square-foot, five-star hotel.

Jackson has been called “tony,” “posh” and “upscale.” These adjectives have replaced the old ones like “quaint,” “charming” and “western.” Jackson Hole needs another hoity-toity hotel like a Snake River sewer line break. But the council and staff slowly convinced themselves that there exists a significant tourist market segment that rolls into town every summer expecting to have their Hummer parked for them, their luggage handled by men wearing white gloves and their Wall Street Journal waiting every morning outside the door of their three-room, fourth-floor luxury penthouse suite.

“The quality of the bed base is a factor,” Bob McLaurin said. Jackson’s administrator said the city is competing with Teton Village in terms of potential lodging guests and doesn’t see the revenue until those guests spend money. “We are driven by sales tax revenue.”

Councilmember Melissa Turley said the community could benefit from the addition of a convention room space in town and Mayor Mark Barron acknowledged the “market moves as needed” when it came to lodging upsizing. Public comment swung in favor of the Mills Mansion largely on the voice of business owners slathering to sell their trinkets to the $500-a-night lodgers.

Sean Love: “I sell souvenirs down on the town square. [This project] will stabilize our season-based economy.”

Chris Hawks: “It will service businesses with no foot traffic from the town square.”
David Novelle: “It’s going to give our merchants downtown more people to buy our goods.”

Colby Cox: “This project is good for the long-term prosperity of the economy.”
Scant opposition to the project wondered where the ‘Average Joe’ from Des Moines was going to stay for under 150 clams. Armond Acri said an informal poll of his friends showed not too many inclined to stay at a five-star hotel. “Maybe that is a result of my skid friends,” he admitted.

Justin Adams wasn’t jazzed with the project and thought the town should at least soak the developer for every fee-in-lieu they could get. Council candidate Tommy Wood said the forecasted 90 employees the project would require would further exacerbate Jackson’s workforce housing problems. “If our employees don’t have a place to live, our town is going to crumble,” he warned.

Precedent was also on the minds of some. “If this gets OK’d, does it get the dominoes falling?” Franz Camenzind wondered. The standard set by the Mills ‘Bed & Breakyou’ would topple at least one domino named Jay Varley.
“There are a lot of things in here that provide precedent for me, so I guess I have to say go for it,” Varley said.

Mark Obringer loved the fact that the building was not one massive structure but actually three distinct giant ones. Choosing the lesser of two evils he added: “It could be, if this project went away, we could get 10 Jack Dennis’s on this site with little control over the design.”

“I’m not surprised we are struggling with this. It is a very big project,” Turley said. “Keep in mind: this is a redevelopment,” she added.
Barron pointed to the underground parking, use of open space, and pedestrian realm as significant benefits to the community. He warned Mills that he better have valets ready to park cars when the hotel went over 85 percent occupancy.

Abe Tabatabai seemed to go with the flow, leaving Bob Lenz the only councilman awestruck at the scale. “When you come down Pearl, it is just gonna hit you in the face – blammo! It’s so massive it just overwhelms the area,” he said.

In the end, with the blessing of the Design & Review Committee, Planning & Zoning, city staffers, and the Housing Authority, the Mills Hotel Wyoming, LLC was granted approval of its master plan with parking details and alleyway use to be determined later in the process.
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Hoity-toity hotel gets the town council go-ahead | Planet JH News Article: General News

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