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Mountain View’s City Council on Tuesday picked a developer to build a downtown hotel that would replace a pair of public parking lots. The winning proposal came from the Robert Green Company of Encinitas to add a $110 million Joie de Vivre hotel to the Castro Street commercial hub.
The hotel project could have big ramifications for a bustling area of Mountain View. The valuable city-owned land is considered a sure bet for a high-end hotel, and city officials estimate it will bring in millions of dollars in future hotel tax revenues.
The council approved the project in a 6-1 vote, with John Inks opposed, at the Oct. 6 meeting.
Since the project would redevelop two public parking lots, city officials insisted that developers include a new underground garage that would provide a comparable number of free parking stalls.
Robert Green and rival firm R.D. Olson both said they could meet the parking requirements. But city officials faulted R.D. Olson’s proposal for not meeting the city’s labor provisions. City staffers favored Robert Green, praising it for offering better revenues and a superior overall design. Robert Green’s winning proposal is for a 180-room hotel and underground garages with 385 parking spaces, or about 230 more stalls than are currently available.
In the coming weeks, city officials will begin negotiating exclusive rights for Robert Green to develop the site. A final contract with financial terms is expected by the end of the year.
On Tuesday, company principal Robert Green Jr. thanked city leaders for their endorsement.
“The thing I want to stress is that we’re extremely flexible,” Green said. “We can figure out with staff what works best for us.”
There were plenty of signs on Tuesday that flexibility would be needed down the road. While largely endorsing the overall plans, council members did offer plenty of critiques on the development’s finer details.
Councilman Lenny Siegel expressed disappointment that, as part of the project, the Robert Green Company included a 53,000-square foot office building. Given the close proximity to the downtown Caltrain station, the site for the planned office building would be better suited for housing, he said.
“Instead of addressing the jobs-housing imbalance, we’d be making it worse,” Siegel said. “We can’t have a discussion about housing one hour and then move off and forget about the need created by the office development.”
Siegel’s complaint was supported by fellow council members Pat Showalter and Ken Rosenberg.
When they sought proposals earlier this year, city officials did not mention housing as a preferred use for the two parking lot sites. Another public parking lot located downtown, along Bryant Street, is expected to be considered for housing projects in the future.
Councilman Inks withdrew his support for the project over its projected costs. The full project is expected to cost more than $110 million dollars, and Inks reminded his colleagues that the city would be asked to cover some of that price.
“I’m not comfortable with the numbers at this time,” Inks said.
The Robert Green Company had indicated the city’s stipulations for free parking and labor concessions added as much as $25 million to the total cost of the project. For that reason, company representatives said last month that the city would need to help finance some of the project.
“Siegel’s complaint was supported by fellow council members Pat Showalter and Ken Rosenberg.”
Hmm, yet only Inks vote against it, how come?
By the time this gets build it will be in the 300million dollar range.
Is the 53,000 sq ft of office space part of the hotel or an adjacent building? I’m confused how a bid to build a hotel includes office space.
Can the Voice provide a link for more information about this development?
Will this INCREASE available public parking or take away? If I were a restaurant owner that had paid into the downtown parking district I’d be looking at a lawsuit against the city for failing to deliver.
Its easier for me to drive to Palo Alto and actually find parking than it is to go to downtown MV now.
@eric:
It’s covered in the article:
“Robert Green’s winning proposal is for a 180-room hotel and underground garages with 385 parking spaces, or about 230 more stalls than are currently available.”
Maybe, maybe not.
Most hotel parking garages are lightly occupied during the day by hotel guest vehicles. This is when a large number of slots would be used by hotel employees and the office workers. At night, when the hotel guests return, many of those vehicles would be gone.
It’s worth noting that including a housing development put a different demand on parking; the parking usage by residents would closely match that of the hotel guests, plus there might be more than one vehicle per housing unit. Personally, I would have rather seen housing instead of offices, but you can’t please everyone 100% of the the time.
It’s worth pointing out that a luxury hotel at 90% weekday occupancy would generate a sizable amount of revenue to the city in terms of transient occupancy tax.
Anyhow, I’ve stayed at a few Joie de Vivre hotels and the brand makes sense as a premium hotel offering for downtown Mountain View.
180-room hotel and underground garages with 385 parking spaces.
The guess will need some service so some maintenance workers might have cars or use the transit system. 180 + 40 + 35000 / 200 per office = 395 or no lunch time parking and some after dinner parking.
Developers are not dumb, each space = $$$ rent fees. if you do not request parking for daytime they will not build it.
Lots of older outdated small office buildings can be demolished for housings along with those crappy motels.
How many acres is the site? Does anyone know?
Where exactly is this hotel going to be?
The hotel would replace city Parking Lot 4, Hope Street at Villa.
https://mountainview.legistar.com/LegislationDetail.aspx?ID=2125141&GUID=13D12ADF-612D-458F-B418-E2B3D731E638
The parking lot across the street (Lot 8) would become the office complex.
Yes, everyone, but how big is the site? 1 acre? 2 acres? 10 acres? 20 acres?
The City Council study session memo indicates that Lot 4 (where the hotel is slated to be located) is 1.1 acres. Lot 8 across the street (where the office building is slated to be build) is 0.65 acres.
Study Session memo: https://mountainview.legistar.com/View.ashx?M=F&ID=3447212&GUID=A659D902-DABC-4477-BBE4-D5BE66BB03C2
Was way more excited about Virgin Hotel coming downtown. Why did that get killed and this went through?
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Reader:”180-room hotel and underground garages with 385 parking spaces, or about 230 more stalls than are currently available.”
Subtract the parking that will be occupied by hotel residents, hotel employees, employees of 53,000-square foot office building. I do not think 230 stalls will cover the difference.