City Talk: Savannah will have new hotels. Where should they be?

Bill Dawers
·3 min read
The Avery is a proposed boutique hotel at 215 Whitaker Street in the Historic District. Plans call to demolish the existing structure and build a four-story hotel with a speakeasy in the basement, according to site documents.
The Avery is a proposed boutique hotel at 215 Whitaker Street in the Historic District. Plans call to demolish the existing structure and build a four-story hotel with a speakeasy in the basement, according to site documents.

This is the City Talk column by Bill Dawers, a longtime contributor to the Savannah Morning News.

The Victorian and Thomas Square neighborhoods are taking steps that seem likely to result in a ban on new hotel development from Forsyth Park to Victory Drive.

The wonky but easy strategy involves extending the existing hotel overlay district, which currently goes only as far south as Gwinnett Street. With the extension of the overlay to Victory Drive, city officials can then designate the entire area from East Broad Street to Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard as off-limits for hotel development.

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The neighborhood associations are still getting feedback on the plan from residents, but the mood seems clear. Some residents are concerned that the neighborhoods south of Forsyth Park will eventually look too similar to the Landmark Historic District, which has lost much of its residential character because of the proliferation of hotels, vacation rentals and tourist-oriented businesses.

A rendering of the multi-family portion of Starland Village, a four-building mixed-use project in the heart of Savannah's newest neighborhood, Starland. Plans were approved by the planning commission in 2018, but work has yet to progress on the development, which would include apartments, studio and office space, retail, a tavern and event space.
A rendering of the multi-family portion of Starland Village, a four-building mixed-use project in the heart of Savannah's newest neighborhood, Starland. Plans were approved by the planning commission in 2018, but work has yet to progress on the development, which would include apartments, studio and office space, retail, a tavern and event space.

The opposition to hotels is also rooted in a widely held desire for greater residential density. The Thomas Square neighborhood has in recent years welcomed relatively large apartment developments like The Matadora at Bull and 31st streets and Starland Village, which is moving ahead along Bull Street south of 37th Street.

Under the current zoning, hotels can be built on property zoned TC-1 or TC-2, but developers must go through the process of getting a special use permit. As detailed by Bridget Lidy from the City of Savannah at a recent joint meeting of the two neighborhood associations, there are a limited number of developable parcels of sufficient size.

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Potential sites

At the same time, it’s easy to imagine scenarios that could free up larger lots that would be attractive to hoteliers. Consider, for example, the old Sears building at Bull and Henry streets. Some parcels along Montgomery Street or Victory Drive could also be prime candidates for hotels.

Assuming neighborhood residents support the restrictions on hotels, city officials should move quickly with the extension of the overlay.

But they shouldn’t stop there.

The current overlay permits hotels at the Civic Center site, despite strong opposition to hotels from downtown residents and some other stakeholders during the public engagement process a few years ago.

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The overlay would even permit hotels in Yamacraw Village, which might be redeveloped in the next several years. If officials are truly committed to keeping Yamacraw’s residential character, they should make straightforward changes to the map.

I should note that permitting hotels in the overlay is not equivalent to allowing them in the base zoning or guaranteeing the approval of special use permits, but if city leaders don’t want to sell publicly owned land for hotel development, they don’t need to raise doubts about that intent.

Seize the opportunity for engagement

Mayor Van Johnson and other City Council members were swept into office in part because of concerns about tourism, and voters could reasonably have expected that they would have done much more by now to extend the nascent efforts of the previous administration to encourage residential rather than hotel development in the heart of the city.

The mayor and council should seize this opportunity to engage the public in a broader discussion about the future of hotels across the city.

Bill Dawers
Bill Dawers

Savannah is a wonderful tourist destination, and the city will need more hotels. In a balanced economy, hotels can enhance mixed-use urban neighborhoods and some commercial corridors.

Voters deserve to know that their elected leaders have a plan to manage that inevitable growth.

This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Where should Savannah choose to develop hotels to support tourism?