Newport Zoning Board rejects hotel proposal on Waites Wharf. What swayed the votes against
NEWPORT – After four long years of consideration, the Waites Wharf hotel project was ultimately shot down by the Zoning Board in a 3-2 decision at its regular meeting Monday evening.
“In viewing the totality of the evidence, I believe that the applicants’ experts failed to give consideration to the effects of the project to the immediate neighborhood abutting the south of the project site,” said Chair Samuel Goldblatt. “It is a discrete, recognizable neighborhood adjacent and to the south of the proposed development that is primarily residential in character and no less deserving of protection from adverse impacts than any other residential neighborhood.”
The hotel developers needed the special use permit to have permission from the city to build a hotel in the city’s Waterfront Business District, and the variance was to allow the developers to build more hotel rooms than are allowed in that zone. Attorney J. Russel Jackson, who represented Abruseze and the development team, declined to comment on the decision citing a need to speak with his client to determine next steps.
Goldblatt, alongside fellow zoning Board members Russell Johnson and David Riley, voted to reject the application for a special use permit and zoning variance. In their deliberations, the three cited various reasons for their vote, including abutters’ testimony that the project would negatively impact the character of the area and a lack of evidence that the variance would be the least relief necessary for development on that site.
The application needed four of the five members of the Zoning Board to win approval because the application had been submitted before legislative action that changed this rule, which became effective in January 2023. Zoning Board members Wick Rudd and Bart Grimes, who voted in favor of the project, explained in their deliberations that they were satisfied by the expert testimony on behalf of the applicant that the zoning variance on the number of rooms was necessary to make the project economically viable, considering the amount of work needed to be done on the site. Rudd also pointed out the city’s need for additional hotel room space to curb the adverse effects of short-term rentals and dark vacation homes on the city’s housing stock.
The Zoning Board process alone took just under 11 hours spread out between three special meetings as the applicants and opposition made their cases to the five board members, however, the Waites Wharf hotel project’s journey through the city’s approval processes started long before it came before the Zoning Board in 2023.
Harbour Realty LLC, owned by Thomas Abruseze and family, submitted an application to the city to build a 150-room hotel on the property in 2019. The plans for the hotel were later revised to reduce the number of rooms to 133, which the Planning Board later rejected during its first Developmental Plan Review hearing in 2022. The applicants further reduced the number of rooms to 118, which is still more than is allowed in the zone the hotel is proposed to sit within. This plan, the most current plan, also received an unfavorable recommendation from the Planning Board in March 2023, however, the applicants decided to move forward with the Zoning Board process regardless.
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The project has faced pushback from several abutters, including the residents of Coddington Landing Condominiums, which retained Attorney Scott Spear to argue against the proposed hotel during the Zoning Board proceedings. The proposal also faced backlash from Newport residents outside the abutting neighborhood, most of whom objected to the addition of another large hotel on the city’s waterfront.
“I'm very, very satisfied with the decision and I'm satisfied with the reasoning behind it," Spear said. "I appreciate the fact that those who voted against the application were very focused on the impacts it was going to have on a very valuable and important neighborhood. I got the sense that they understood what it is to be a family, what it is to live in that neighborhood and that the property next to them needs to be examined through a different lens. What needs to go on that site is something that truly is waterfront business, dependent on the water, mixed use, something that can work well and honor the fabric that the city really desires down there."
This article originally appeared on Newport Daily News: Waites Wharf hotel proposal rejected by Newport Zoning Board
