hotels – Enviro Updates

Katherine Minkiewicz-Martine, SOCONEWS

Many Healdsburg residents are up in arms over a proposed four-story 16-room hotel — called Hotel Healdsburg Residences — that would be segmented into three separate buildings at 400, 412 and 418 Healdsburg Avenue.

While residents and planning commissioners share some of the same concerns regarding the scale of the project and its proposed design elements, the main concern for several community members is the project in relation to the city’s hotel ordinance, which limits the amount of hotels built in the Plaza retail area and in the city’s Downtown Commercial District (CD) near Piper, Vine, East and Mill Streets.

Bill Swindell, THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

Sonoma County’s hoteliers are playing catch-up to make room for the growing number of visitors.

The lodging industry is undergoing unprecedented expansion with about a dozen properties slated to open in the next few years.

The hotel building boom comes after a dearth of new lodging in the earlier part of the decade. Developers and hoteliers now appear to be making up for inactivity in the aftermath of the Great Recession, as the county remains a prime destination for wine tourism and an array of other activities and places to visit.

“This is a very strong county. … The occupancy level is very, very high,” said Jan Freitag, senior vice president for STR, a Tennessee research firm and longtime tracker of the global hotel industry. “Developers see a hot market and say, ‘Let’s get into it.’”

Developers are betting Sonoma County can keep delivering more tourists. It’s averaging about 7.5 million visitors a year. Those visitors are staying in more than 7,000 hotel rooms and 3,700 campground and recreational vehicle spaces, according to Sonoma County Tourism figures.

Environmental Center of Sonoma County

Tag: hotels

Proposed hotel sparks controversy among Healdsburg residents

Sonoma County hotel sector poised for expansion