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Herndon hotel proposal clings to life
The proposed Element Hotel that Herndon Town Council rejected Sept. 23 may not yet be completely dead.
Council members, town staff and Diamond Properties representatives met on Sept. 29 to discuss a potential reworking of the proposal, according to Councilman Richard Downer.
Councilmen Downer, Dave Kirby and Bill Tirrell voted for the proposal but were outvoted by Mayor Steve DeBenedittis, Vice Mayor Connie Hutchinson and Councilmen Dennis Husch and Charlie Waddell.
The hotel proposal was estimated to provide the town with $14.2 million in tax revenues over a 20-year period. This figure does not include any additional tax revenues generated by hotel guests shopping in the downtown.
"The economic activity the project would have created disappoints me greatly, now that it may not happen," Downer said.
But Hutchinson makes no bones about her position on the proposal.
"Money isn't everything, and I don't make my decisions on potential rezonings based on how much money the town can make in the process," she told The Times in an e-mail.
Hutchinson's full-time job is running the town's visitors center. In her many terms on the council, she historically has voted to preserve Herndon's small-town appeal.
"We have established a Heritage Preservation District for the downtown and any new development should not 'overpower' the current structure of downtown. The mass and especially the height of this proposed development goes against the guidelines set out for the Heritage District," she said.
Husch is even more adamant about his vote against the proposal. "Many on both sides of the dais appear to have taken the position that only those citizens that attend Town Council public hearings should have a voice in the decision-making process and the desires of those citizens that cannot attend the meetings and those that choose to remain anonymous should be marginalized and ignored," he said in an e-mail.
Former councilwoman Ann Null agrees with Husch. In her opinion, some local news coverage of the hotel proposal has been one-sided.
"My petition of 40 or so names of people who opposed the proposal is over three times the number of those who spoke in favor of the project," she said referring to the September 23 public hearing. "When we're gauging public opinion, I think it is important to include people who don't have time to come to a hearing but will either sign a petition or send an e-mail," she said.
Null states that traffic was one of the key issues in her opposition to the hotel plan.
"A traffic rating of 'F' is unacceptable. You tolerate it in a heritage preservation district to preserve historic structures but if you're building something from scratch, you go for an 'A'," she said.
Even though it was voted down 4-3, Null doesn't think the hotel proposal is dead.
"I expect to see a renewal," she said. "A rejected application cannot be re-applied for before a year but a vote to renew an application can be made before that. I don't think this is over."
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