Town councillors have nixed a proposal for a new hotel in the Dorval Crossing commercial area.
Concerns about insufficient parking and difficult site access led to a 9-5 vote against the development during the town's planning and development council meeting on July 6.
Planning staff had recommended approval of the seven-storey Avid Hotel, proposed for the south side of North Service Road West, immediately west of the Kerr Street QEW off-ramp.
But the proposal called for only 95 parking spots, fewer than the 134 required by town rules, causing councillors to worry that hotel guest and staff would park at the nearby plaza.
Ward 4 councillor Allan Elgar predicted “a tow truck bonanza,” with hotel guest vehicles towed for illegal parking.
The hotel’s plan for a right-in, right-out only access off North Service Road was also unpopular.
While planning staff suggested nearby u-turns could be safely accommodated to help people travel in the direction they wished, several councillors expressed concern about the safety of that idea.
“I can’t see this is a practical project for traffic," said Ward 5 councillor Jeff Knoll. "This is a really busy road now and this is just going to make it worse.”
The application was originally considered in 2018.
Similar concerns about parking and access led council to defer the request from Empress Capital Group for official plan and zoning changes to allow the 114-room hotel.
The developer was directed to try to reach an agreement with the Dorval Crossing East plaza to allow shared parking and property access.
While unable to reach that agreement, the developer made minor modifications to its plan and commissioned an additional parking survey to justify the request for reduced parking requirements.
That survey looked at the parking demand at the Fairfield Inn and the Hilton Garden Inn during August and September, Oakville’s two busiest months for hotel occupancy.
“Both sites feature shared parking lots that serve overnight guests, hotel staff, and conference visitors, all of which are included in the surveyed parking rate,” says a report from town planning staff.
The parking survey found that “the average parking rate across the two hotels at 100 per cent assumed occupancy was 0.80, meaning 0.8 parking spaces were used per occupied room at peak parking demand.”
Applying that rate to the 114 rooms proposed for the Avid Hotel suggests a demand of 92 spaces, the report notes.
The new hotel was proposed to have a gross floor area of 5,146 square metres and include such guest amenities as a lobby, fitness centre, breakfast area, outdoor patio, indoor pool and meeting facilities.
The Avid Hotel brand is a budget offering from the Intercontinental Hotels Group (IHG), which operates Regent, Holiday Inn, Staybridge Suites and other properties. Introduced to Canada in 2018, IHG says it will offer rooms at a price point 10-15 per cent lower than Holiday Inn Express properties.
Speaking on behalf of the developer, planning consultant Bruce Hall said the hotel would fill the last vacant parcel in the commercial area, contribute to the mix of land uses and generate additional customers for area businesses.
He estimated the hotel would create 25 full-time jobs, as well as additional part-time and construction jobs.
Documents related to the application can be found here.
The planning and development meeting was live-streamed and can be watched here.