The fate of a proposed hotel on SH 121 was put on hold until January at the request of the developer at the final Colleyville City Council meeting of the year Dec. 16.
The proposed hotel, Hampton Inn & Suites, is planned to be built at 5200 SH 121 on a piece of undeveloped, unplatted land next to La Hacienda Ranch. There are currently no hotels in Colleyville.
At the Dec. 2 council meeting, the developer asked the council to rezone 1.94 acres of property from CC-2 Commercial District to a Planned Unit Development-Commerical zoning in order to build a five-story, 96-room hotel.
In addition the developer asked the city for a number of building code waivers. Most notably the developer asked the city to waive the four-story height limit so the hotel could be five stories, construct 97 parking spaces instead of the required 98 spaces, reduce the required amount of landscaped area to 18 percent and to waive the requirement that a hotel must include a restaurant.
A number of people spoke in favor and against the project during the public hearing.
Jeff Lowery, the general manager of La Hacienda Ranch, addressed the council on behalf of owner Mariano Martinez and the 108 employees that work there.
"We are in opposition to the proposed 77-foot hotel that will be constructed only 30 feet from our property line," Lowery said. "There is no doubt at all that this hotel will visually overpower our restaurant and diminish the ambiance that we have built."
Other speakers cited increased traffic, crime and the security of adjacent neighbor Colleyville Heritage High School as reasons that the hotel should not be approved.
Local attorney and business owner Julia Barth spoke in favor of approving the hotel.
"I vehemently support them building this hotel," Barth said. "This is the corporate location for my law office. I am now housing employees when I bring them in from San Antonio and Houston in Bedford. I would prefer to house them here in Colleyville."
In addition, Barth bought the nearby former Mac's restaurant; potential tenants may look more favorably at the location if there is a hotel in the immediate area, she said.
"I feel like the trend is for this little section of highway, the only section that Colleyville has to claim, is starting to peter out, and I think that getting this hotel with this name behind it is going to attract business clients," Barth said. "I believe that that is going to inject life into our section of the highway."
After the public hearing closed, the developer requested that council table the item until the next meeting on Jan. 6 to work on some of the points that the speakers brought up.
Because of the opposition to the project, a super-majority vote of the council must be earned in order to approve it; if more than one council member votes against the project, it will fail.
