City mayor discusses future of hotel development

Sep. 19—PLATTSBURGH — A potential hotel development in the City of Plattsburgh has been stonewalled by a section of city code that requires three-fourths of the Common Council to approve any sale of city property.

Mayor Chris Rosenquest says that code needs to change.

"I don't necessarily see a path forward for this particular (hotel) project unless the rules do change," Rosenquest said.

After an initial 4-3 council approval, the city had been on the verge of signing a hotel development agreement with Saranac Lake-based developer GP Manager PLF, LLC to construct a hotel with approximately 125 rooms and 4,000 square feet of meeting space, a restaurant and other ancillary facilities on a piece of property located next to the Plattsburgh City Marina off of Dock Street.

The deal would have sold the city-owned property to the developer for an estimated $1.2 million.

Though shortly after the development agreement was approved, the project derailed when it was revealed the necessary voting threshold for approving the sale of city property, which was first brought to the city's attention by a couple councilors opposed to the development agreement, was not met.

"Quite frankly, that property has been sitting there as unmowed lawn for 20 years, and if it sits there for another 20 years, it's unfortunate," Rosenquest said.

"But you know, it's not going to hurt anybody right now."

Instead, the mayor's main concern going forward lies within the council's ability to tank projects like this. Rosenquest explained that essentially, because of how city code 24-3 is written, all it takes is one councilor to vote against any sale of real property in the city for a proposal to fail.

Councilors had previously referred to this voting threshold as a "supermajority" from the council.

"Internally, we ... colloquially call it a 'super duper majority,'" because three-fourths of the seven-member council equals 5.2 votes, Rosenquest said.

"And you have to round up under these rules, meaning six councilors have to vote in the positive for the sale of real property."

The mayor called this "inappropriate."

"There's just no way I can sit here and say that's OK. And, you know, if members of the council think beyond themselves, and really start to think about what that means for the future of our city, they too would say, 'No, this is not right. That's not right for one person to be able to tank a project or to tank millions of dollars of investment for any reason, and for no reason. For no reason,'" Rosenquest said.

"That's wild to me ... I think that's just grossly inappropriate. So that law needs to change and I think it's fair to change it."

Changing the city code from its current council voting requirements would likely require — if there's opposition — introducing a permissive referendum for voters to decide upon, he said.

In talking about what the change could entail, Rosenquest said he would still like to see the council have some authority and say in the process.

"Now, does that mean it needs to be a simple majority? No, I don't think so. I think it still needs to have some teeth," he said.

"I don't think that it can just come down to a mayoral tie, but it doesn't need to be all six councilors and to just have one person saying, 'No, I don't like that development. No, I don't like that. Oh, no, I don't like that housing. That housing shouldn't go there, it should go somewhere else.' I don't think so. I don't think so."

Moving forward, if and when the hotel development agreement does make its way back to council, the mayor agreed with the idea of having more public input before the hotel development agreement ever returns to the council.

But he said from what he's heard in the community already, many people have shared their approval of the project.

"The feedback that I often get in the community is 'yeah, why wouldn't we have that? Why can't we have our fair share of that pie? ... People know that there are already people coming here, there's already tourists coming here."

Though he believes there wouldn't be enough generated public input to change any councilor's mind on the issue.

"These hotels that are uptown, essentially the council, some of these members of the council would rather see the (tourists) eat at Applebee's rather than Arnie's. and that's the problem that I have, like we should be, as elected officials, the strongest advocates, the most vocal cheerleaders for our community," Rosenquest said.

"And when you have somebody like a developer like this that's willing to spend multiple millions of dollars in the City of Plattsburgh, it not only benefits the city taxpayer, but the downtown businesses as well. I'm more than happy to put this out to the public. I have a very strong opinion, maybe unfairly, that even if we had hundreds of people coming to the council advocating and fighting for a hotel, it would not change the minds of those people who are so staunchly opposed to something like this."

Email: cnewton@pressrepublican.com

Twitter: CarlySNewton