Sept. 11–The Burbank Planning Board on Monday signed off on plans to construct a five-story, 170-room hotel on the South San Fernando Boulevard corridor. The project is touted by the developer as an opportunity to revitalize downtown by drawing business and leisure travelers to the area.
The proposed Grandview Suites hotel, to be located on San Fernando between Santa Anita and Providencia avenues, is the second of two new hotels slated for the corridor. Its proposed site is just a block away from where a six-story, 210-room Hilton Garden Inn will be constructed.
The Grandview Suites hotel is expected to generate $9 million in hotel bed taxes for the city over the next decade, according to developer Tony Wrzosek, of R.D. Olson Development.
Even so, some business owners and residents worried that construction would snarl traffic and parking in the area.
“Building two hotels at the same time will create a nightmare, not just a problem,” said Igor Frank, whose body shop business currently sits where the new hotel will be built.
But city officials said the subterranean parking lot of 136 parking spaces will be the first thing built during construction, giving workers a place to park when they go to work. Additionally, when the hotel is built, it will generate an extra 34 vehicle trips during peak hours each day, which city officials called nominal.
Frank, though, added that he didn’t think the hotel would fit in the proposed location. A tow yard with portable toilets sits next door, which “might smell for the residents of the exclusive hotel,” Frank said.
With the hotel plans moving forward, Frank will have to relocate his business.
The board approved the project in a 4-0 vote, with Commissioner Christopher Rizzotti calling the proposal a “vast improvement” from what’s currently at the site. Commissioner Kenneth San Miguel was absent.
Wrzosek said he hopes to start construction mid-December.
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