HomeMy WebLinkAbout3-3-2020 Public Comment - D. Loseff - AC Marriott Hotel ParkingFrom:Cyndy Andrus
To:Agenda
Cc:Dennis Taylor; Martin Matsen; Ed Meece; David Fine; Brit Fontenot
Subject:FW: City Commission meeting tonight
Date:Tuesday, March 3, 2020 2:47:39 PM
Attachments:downtown bozeman. parking. ac marriott application..pdf
Good Afternoon,
I received this late last night from David Loseff. Just passing it along to agenda.
From: David Loseff <dploseff@gmail.com>
Sent: Monday, March 2, 2020 10:52 PM
To: Cyndy Andrus <CAndrus@BOZEMAN.NET>
Subject: City Commission meeting tonight
Dear Cyndi,
I wanted to follow-up on the question which you raised at tonight's Commission meetingregarding the parking requirements on the AC Marriott proposal and Marty's answer given at
the meeting. Frankly, his answer, while possibly technically correct, is either naive ormisleading. Juat a couple of facts:
The application for site permit, COA and demo permit calls for building a 143 roomhotel with ZERO parking spaces. This application also calls for making ZERO in cash-
in-lieu fees. See attached.Originally, at the time off application, HomeBase was seeking to convert some or all of
its 113 current operating parking leases in the Downtown Garage into 25 year UDCleases to satisfy any AC Marriott hotel parking requirements and avoid any cash-in-lieu
fees ($2 million). His proposal to the Parking Commission was rejected.As we just discovered via Open Records disclosures, HomeBase initiated an effort to
bypass the Parking Commission and apply directly to the City/Commision for 80 UDCleases in the Downtown Garage.
When substantial public comment opposed to his site permit application was filed,HomeBase proposed to use the Medical Arts Building parking lot to accommodate the
AC Marriott parking needs. However, apart from the 1,000' distance question, therecontinue to be serious questions about whether or not that parking lot can actually
accommodate 80 parking spaces due to existing leases, current usage levels.....andperhaps most disconcerting, the proposed parking space leases used to justify the AC
Marriott parking requirements (and avoid making a $2 million cash-in-lieu payment) areshort term and easily cancelled making it appear to be simply "window dressing"
(saving him $2 million) and there is a reasonable likelihood of bait-and-switch withlikely redevelopment of the Medical Arts site in several years time.
At the same time that HomeBase is claiming use of the Medical Arts parking lot site toaddress the AC Marriott parking needs, HomeBase is still actively pursuing 80 UDC
spaces in the downtown Garage and entered into an LOI agreement with the City(despite Parking Commission denial of the same request). If AC Marriott was really
planning on using the Medical Arts parking lot to address its parking needs, why hasn'tthe pursuit of downtown garage spaces via Letter of Intent been terminated? Again, all
of these efforts are non transparent and were only discovered due to Opens RecordsRequests.
Even despite the HomeBase claims that it will set up leases to use the Medical Artsparking lot for its hotel project, I believe that the hotel Application and its Amended
Application continue to state that their 143 hotel project will have ZERO parkingspaces.
I just wanted to make sure that you knew that the full set of facts are much deeper than thebrief answer provided by Marty at tonight's meeting.
David Loseff