Oct. 26–PROVIDENCE — A 91-room hotel intended for the empty parking lot next to Crossroads passed a major regulatory milestone last week, winning master plan approval from the City Plan Commission.
The project's developers, Hotel Associates LLC, wants to build a five-story, 91-room Holiday Inn Express at 371 Pine St., an empty lot next to the Crossroads homeless shelter, overlooking Route 95. The City Plan Commission approved the overall master plan for the hotel last week; the only remaining hurdle is approval of the company's requested waivers for 26 fewer parking spaces, the street on which the main entrance opens, and relief from requirements for the number and size of windows on the first floor, said Eric Zuena, managing principal of ZDS Inc., the architects on the project. Those waivers are on the agenda for the commission's November meeting.
Zuena said the building is planned for the corner of Pine Street and Service Road 7, the corner of the site opposite Crossroads. He said the parking lot would be landscaped to separate the two properties, adding that construction could start in the spring and be done in eight months.
Crossroads President Karen Santilli said her organization is pleased to see something being built in the empty lot.
"They said we had an opportunity to voice any objections, but we didn't have any," Santilli said.
The hotel will look to attract the middle- to low-cost end of the market, Zuena said — visitors who don't want to pay downtown hotel rates but still want to be nearby. The Pine Street location is about a 10-minute walk from the Providence Performing Arts Center.
Besides its proximity to Providence's entertainment venues, the site is less than a half mile from Rhode Island and Women & Infants hospitals. That would position the hotel to attract travelers with business there or families looking to be near a loved one who is in the hospital, he said.
The Hotel Associates project is the second instance this year of the city's hotel footprint expanding out of downtown to the other side of Route 95. A few blocks north of the proposed Holiday Inn Express site, on a parking lot across Washington Street from the Public Safety Complex, the Sarchi Group of Weymouth, Massachusetts, wants to build a 76-room Best Western GLo hotel.
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371 Pine St. hotel project
Developer: Hotel Associates LLC
Floors: 5
Rooms: 91
Parking spaces: 62
Lot size: 1.25 acres
Franchise: Holiday Inn Express
Providence hotel projects planned for 2017
Marriott Residence Inn, 154 rooms, Fogarty Building on Sabin Street
Homewood Suites, 120 suites, Kennedy Plaza next to Post Office
Best Western GLo, 76 rooms, 322 Washington St.
Holiday Inn Express, 91 rooms, 371 Pine St.
