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Date: 10/3/2023
NORTHAMPTON — After a 45-minute discussion during their Sept. 28 meeting, the Northampton Planning Board approved a special permit/major site plan for a new 109-room hotel and a three-story residential building on the site where the old Daily Hampshire Gazette building used to be on 115 Conz St.
The approval came with a set of conditions that the owner — Mansour Ghalibaf — must follow, including the idea that the owner must begin work on the foundation of the residential building before a certificate of occupancy for the hotel is granted.
The plans
Ghalibaf, who owns Hotel Northampton and Fairfield Inn & Suites under his Rankin Holdings LLC, is planning a four-story hotel with a total of 18,000 square feet along with a 13,800 square-foot, three-story residential building in front of the proposed hotel and closer to Conz Street.
“The residential building has 31 units,” said Jeff Squire, the principal landscape architect from Berkshire Design Group, during a Planning Board public hearing on Aug. 24. The type of housing in the building will be “market rate” condominium housing according to the planners of the project, and each condo will have one or two bedrooms.
Squire told the board that the project is expected to be completed in phases, and when completed, the hotel would increase the city’s hotel inventory from 331 rooms to 440.
Other background
The hotel plans originally went in front of the Northampton City Council back in the winter. At that time, Ghalibaf was seeking a tax break for the hotel through a process known as Tax Increment Financing.
According to the proposal at the time, a TIF reduces the incremental increase in property tax revenues generated by a redeveloped and improved property, reducing some of the project’s costs to make the project financially feasible.
City officials back in February estimated that the city would receive $3.4 million in tax revenue when the project is complete because of a tax break, while 50 new jobs would be added and consumer user spending would increase by $4.5 million.
“This will be a very significant redevelopment of that lot and that area, which will very greatly increase the value of the property, and therefore the taxes to the General Fund,” said Mayor Gina-Louise Sciarra at the time. “And it will also add to our hotel/motel excise — and there is a restaurant — to our meals tax.”
Ghalibaf eventually withdrew his request for the City Council to accept the TIF.
Planning Board
The public hearing for the plans was supposed to continue on Sept. 14 but the Department of Public Works did not have enough time before the meeting to review a completed stormwater application from Berkshire Design Group, the architecture firm hired to design the two buildings.
According to Planning & Sustainability Director Carolyn Misch, a stormwater permit was eventually issued by the DPW the day of the Planning Board’s Sept. 28 meeting, which meant the Planning Board could finally continue the hearing and hash out the rest of the details.
The plan is to construct the hotel first before the residential building, but a certificate of occupancy for the hotel cannot be permitted until the foundation of the residential building is built. The Planning Board added this condition as an incentive for the owner to build the residential building since zoning in that area encourages that type of development.