At the Aug, 20 Healdsburg City Council meeting, the council tackled the question of how many hotel rooms should be allowed around the Plaza within the Plaza Retail District, how many hotel rooms should be allowed in the Downtown Commercial District and whether the city should require all new hotels to provide affordable housing as part of any new project.
City staff presented an overview and recommended actions related to the three topics listed above, and noted resident feedback on hotels from the city’s community survey, which was completed earlier this year.
Councilmembers then commenced on a spirited discussion on the future of hotel development, which is one of the city council’s goals for 2018-19: “Draft and implement planning and land use policies that address development of hotels downtown and their impacts on workforce housing, parking and retail space availability to enhance the quality of life of residents and businesses and align development with our community values.”
Based partially on those goals there was consensus from council to move forward with the following changes:
Plaza Retail District (composed of parcels that face downtown Plaza Park): Limit the number of hotel rooms in the downtown plaza retail district to 67. That’s the current number of hotel rooms in this district, which includes Hotel Healdsburg (55 rooms) and the Healdsburg Inn on the Plaza (12 rooms). This city council direction effectively limits any new hotel development. No other visitor lodging would be allowed in this district;
Downtown Commercial District (generally the area north of the roundabout to Piper Street, Grove Street to the east and East Street to the west): Limit new hotels to no more than five rooms and limit the number of hotel rooms per city block-face to five;
Hotel Inclusionary Requirement (citywide): Require new hotels located anywhere within the city limits to construct on-site affordable housing to offset the housing demand they create or pay an in-lieu fee. For every five lodging rooms, the hotel would be required to provide one unit of affordable housing.
What’s next?
City staff is now in the process of preparing an amendment to the city’s land use code so these changes can take effect. This is a multi-step process. This amendment will be in the form of an ordinance that will first go to the planning commission.
The commission will hold a public hearing, then present its recommendations to the city council, which will then hold another public hearing to review and adopt the ordinance.
We invite you to provide feedback at these public hearings.
There were additional discussions regarding the number of hotels citywide. We anticipate this discussion going before a joint city council / planning commission meeting at a later date. Stay tuned.
Preparing for the next emergency
On Aug. 22 and 23, 30 City of Healdsburg staff members participated in a training course for the city’s Emergency Operations Center (EOC).
The course provided those who may be called to serve in the EOC during emergency events the opportunity to reinforce the concepts of situational awareness, better understand the common goals as related to an event requiring activation of the EOC, and how the city can work effectively and efficiently together to facilitate decision making in the event of an emergency.
The city’s EOC is a centralized location where city staff provides interagency coordination and decision making in support of incident response and recovery operations.
Over the past few years the city has had to activate the EOC when we had the floods in December of 2014 and recently during the Tubbs and Pocket fires.
Staff who serve in the EOC participate in ongoing trainings in an effort to prepare for emergency situations that may impact the operations of the city and the lives of residents.
David Mickaelian is the Healdsburg City Manager. To submit ideas or questions for this column, email [email protected].
