Newark council approves new version of Lang Development’s Main Street hotel

“We really feel that the redesign of the project has actually been kind of a renaissance internally for us thinking about how can we use this property,” developer Jeff Lang said. “As quoted by a couple of planning commissioners, they actually think it’s a better design and in retrospect, I think we do, too.”

Council approved the project 5-1, with Councilman Jay Bancroft opposed and Mayor Jerry Clifton absent.

The previously approved plans called for a seven-story building containing 144 hotel rooms, commercial space, 19,500 square feet of office space and a parking garage at 96 E. Main St., across from the Academy Street intersection.

Originally aiming to open the hotel this summer, Lang demolished the former Abbott’s Shoe Repair building and the rear portion of the historic Green Mansion in fall 2019 and dug a pit where the underground parking garage will go. Work was halted in May 2020.

The market for hotels and office space was hurt by the pandemic, Lang said, and it wasn’t feasible to get financing for the original project. Therefore, he had to find a way to redesign it to work financially while still honoring his franchise agreement with Hyatt.

The new proposal shrinks the hotel to what Lang called a more manageable size of 104 rooms and reduces the amenity space from 10,000 square feet to 2,000 square feet, including nixing the rooftop pool and deck, among other features. It also eliminates the office space and commercial space and replaces it with 48 two-bedroom apartments.

It also changes the look of the buildings, though it will still incorporate part of the Green Mansion, as required by the city’s historic preservation law. The Green Mansion will jut out to the sidewalk and be flanked by a patio. Behind that, the hotel will rise up seven stories, eliminating the “wedding cake” design that would have been a more gradual rise.

The Green Mansion portion will house the hotel’s conference room as well as some suites.

“The suites are going to be inhabited by, potentially, people that used to live there over their days as Delaware students, as well as many other visitors. It will have great balconies out on Main Street, and it’s going to be a dynamic reuse of the property,” Lang said.

Behind the hotel will be a surface parking lot. At the back of the site will be a second seven-story building containing ground-level parking and six floors of apartments. Underground parking will run under the entire property, and cars will enter and exit the parking garage from Main Street.

The apartment building will not extend all the way back to the rear of the property as originally planned, which Lang said benefits the city because it avoids splitting the city-run parking lot. There is now room for an access road behind the building, which will link both sides of the city’s lot.

At 74 feet high, it will be one of the tallest buildings on Main Street.

Lang said the hotel will bring economic benefits for the rest of the businesses downtown, bringing in visitors to eat in the restaurants and shop in the stores. Out of respect for the Main Street restaurant community, the hotel will not include its own restaurant.

“It’s a great location on the street, and we feel the hotel will be a fantastic economic driver for downtown,” Lang said.

High schooler launches petition against project

Only three members of the public addressed council Monday night, a far cry from the dozens of public comments when the project was originally approved in March 2019.

Alex Toth, a sophomore at Newark Charter School, presented council with a petition signed by more than 400 people – mostly high school and college students – calling on Lang to work with the community to redesign the project to better complement the Green Mansion and the rest of Main Street.

“For me, Newark’s vibrant history has always been incredibly valuable, and I believe that we could learn a lot by turning our eyes to the city’s past,” Toth explained prior to the meeting, adding that he has been researching the history of Newark recently. “I have been monitoring the news pertaining to new development in Newark, and when I heard that there would be a revision to the original plans for development on the Green Mansion, I decided it was time to take action.”

He’s working with a few classmates on an initiative they are calling Save Old Newark. They plan to continue advocating for zoning changes for downtown.

Melanie Milburn said she liked the previous design better, because it was shorter in the front, buffering the view from the street of the seven-story portion.

“Then all of a sudden you have a wall, a seven-story wall building, that is just not as aesthetically pleasing,” she said, referring to the new design.

However, Mary Clare Matsumoto complimented the new version of the project.

“My concern previously was that the hotel was too big, so this, I think, is better,” Matsumoto said.

Council approves parking waiver

Because the project was a redesign of a previously approved project, council had few avenues for rejecting the proposal.

However, the one stumbling block could have been Lang’s request for a parking waiver.

Parking waivers allow developers to reduce the amount of parking included in a project by paying into a fund that is supposed to be used for public parking projects. The waiver system been used frequently since 1986, but has recently drawn heat from some residents and council members. Just last month, council rejected developer George Danneman’s request for a 67-space waiver for his proposed apartment building at 132 E. Main.

Lang’s project includes 171 parking spaces, which is enough to satisfy the required parking for the hotel as well as allot one space for each apartment unit. However, it falls 39 spaces short of the code requirement.

The company will pay the city $181,000 for a 39-space parking waiver and also agreed to allow the public to pay to park in the garage when space is available.

Lang noted that unless the hotel is fully occupied, there will be spaces available to the public, especially during the day, when hotel parking lots tend to empty out.

Some council members expressed concern that not including all the required parking will exacerbate downtown’s parking problem, but Councilman Jason Lawhorn pointed out that residential parking is different than parking for people visiting restaurants and shops. Students who can’t park at their apartment will pay to store their car on campus or rent a private space elsewhere, not park in the city’s hourly lots, which don’t allow long-term parking.

“There’s not a subtraction from downtown parking when student apartments go in,” Lawhorn said.

Chris Locke, senior vice president and general counsel for Lang Development, argued that by reducing the amount of parking provided to tenants, it discourages students from bringing cars to Newark.

“It’s kind of like build it and they will come. If you provide parking, the car is going to follow. If you don’t provide parking, the cars will not follow. Unfortunately, when we’re required to give a space, they usually will find a car.”

Ultimately, enough council members were convinced and approved the parking waiver 5-1, clearing the way for the rest of the project to be approved.

Left unclear, however, is why council didn’t apply similar logic when rejecting Danneman’s parking waiver request last month.