PORTSMOUTH – A city council has rejected a controversial proposal to build a new four-story, 116-room hotel on a currently undeveloped field off the Route 1 bypass.
The Zoning Board of Adjustment denied a request for a special permit from the Meadowbrook Inn Corporation, owner of the approximately 18-acre property, to build a Holiday Inn Express Staybridge Suites.
The committee acted Tuesday night after hearing from a group of residents in the nearby Coakley Road neighborhood who raised concerns about what they said was an already dangerous intersection of Coakley Road and Route 1 Bypass, and said the hotel would make the situation even worse.
Board members criticized the hotel development team for failing to provide a traffic study to support its claims that the project would not result in a significant increase in traffic congestion.
Board members also criticized the developer’s plans to create community space on the site at 549 U.S. Route 1 Bypass, near the intersection with Coakley Road.
Neighbors speak out against Holiday Inn plan
The site already houses the Portsmouth Chevrolet dealership and is close to Portsmouth’s busy roundabout.
Coakley Road resident Christina Gallmeyer told the panel: “The traffic is terrible. When they say there is no major traffic disruption during peak hours, the opposite is true. If you’re trying to get close to the hospital, Coakley, the roundabout between 3 and 6, forget it.”
When parents in the neighborhood let their children outside to play, they have to worry about people from the car dealership “flying through the neighborhood and testing their cars,” she says.
Kristin Marquis lives on Larry Lane, which is part of the Coakley neighborhood.
“As a mother of a five-year-old, I want to address the traffic issue,” Marquis said. “Many people are already speeding through our neighborhood … testing their vehicles.” She wondered when the peak check-in and check-out times would be at the proposed hotel.
“Is that at 4 o’clock when the roundabout is already very busy?” she asked. “I’m worried about the traffic, it’s already very crazy.”
Thomas Morley, another Coakley Road resident, said he rides his bike through the intersection with the Route 1 bypass and described the experience as “scary.”
“The neighborhood is also changing, we have younger families, we have children in the neighborhood, people who want to cross this intersection safely,” he added.
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Breegan Johnson, a resident of Coakley Road, told the board that she wanted to reiterate her neighbors’ concerns.
“I have two children, 14 and 11, they are some of the older kids in the neighborhood. I don’t let my kids near that intersection,” she said. “I can’t tell you how many times people run across that intersection.”
“I was in the car at the intersection with my kids and saw people just speeding through and almost hitting other people who were trying to cross the street on a green light,” Johnson added. “It happens all the time.”
What Portsmouth board members say about the hotel proposal
The property owner/developer had applied to the board for a special permit for hotel use and also needed a variance to allow 7.85% common areas, when the site’s new access zoning requires 10%, according to city documents.
Board member David Rheaume successfully made a motion to deny the variance request due to lack of common areas, noting that the development team attributed the inability to meet the 10% common area requirement to the amount of wetlands on the site.
In fact, Rheaume claimed: “There is already a very intensive use on this property, and they want to add another very intensive use. That is the real reason they are unable to pay the 10%.”
The Board of Directors approved the motion to reject the deviation by 6 votes to 1.
Board member Paul Mannle successfully filed a motion to deny the hotel’s special permit application.
“It is the applicant’s duty to submit an application that meets all the criteria,” said Mannle. “Saying there will be no impact on traffic is not enough.”
He believes that a hotel at this location “would result in a significant increase in traffic.”
Board member Beth Margeson said, “There will certainly be an increase in traffic congestion in the area.”
Like Mannle, she noted: “The applicant has failed to provide us with any data in this regard.”
The hotel is planned in an area that is considered particularly problematic for traffic congestion due to its location “directly behind the Portsmouth roundabout”.
Other board members wanted to give developers the opportunity to submit additional information about traffic impacts and voted against the motion to dismiss.
The motion was passed by a vote of 4 to 3, with Mannle, Margeson, Thomas Nies and Thomas Rossi voting to reject it.
Board Chair Phyllis Eldridge, Rheaume and board member Jeffrey Mattson voted against it.
The landowner’s proposal for a hotel had “little impact”
Attorney James Scully Jr., who represents the Meadowbrook Inn Corporation, said the portion of the property where the hotel was planned “has always been considered by my client and the (city) planning board, to my knowledge, as a future development area.”
The development team has not proposed changing the site’s current entrances and exits, he said, pointing out that people could exit the site and head south on the Route 1 bypass or turn left and walk toward the roundabout.
“My client’s main concern was to use this property in a way that would have as little impact on the environment as possible,” said Scully.
Although the use is permitted, the property owner does not want “a fast-food restaurant … which would significantly impede traffic during peak times.”
He described the proposed hotel as a “lower impact use” where “people could check in during the day and check out during the day.”
As for the proposed common areas, Scully told the board that they would have to be limited because “a significant portion of our property is wetlands.”
Board member Nies expressed concern about “the quality of the common room.”
“I find it difficult to describe a green strip along the roundabout as a sensible area,” he said.
According to city assessor records, the property’s last value was estimated at $10.7 million.
According to documents filed with the city, Portsmouth Chevrolet leases its dealership space from the property owner.
