A rebuilding project from last years North Bay fires just got turned down.
The planning commission in Santa Rosa just denied a permit for a new hotel.
A 114 room, 4-storyRresidence Inn Hotel by Marriott, as of now, will not be built in Santa Rosa’s Fountaingrove neighborhood.
The planning commission in a 3-3 vote denied a permit for the 4.6 acre site.
In their November 29th meeting, commissioners who voted against the hotel explained they were concerned about the potential dangers that loomed during another deadly and destructive wildfire.
“We get another Tubb Fire in the middle of the night with out of town guests trying to evacuate it’s hard for me to approve something like this in this area especially seeing the number of deaths in the Camp Fire of people trying to evacuate,” Julian Peterson on the planning commission said.
The plans call for the Marriott to be built just North of two hotels that were destroyed in the 2017 Tubbs Fire, the Hilton Sonoma Wine Country Hotel and the Fountaingrove Inn.
An assistant fire marshal told the commission he did not see problems with tourists evacuating and a commissioner who voted for the plan agreed the hotel would bring jobs and people back to the city.
An environmental group is glad the planning commission is waiting to build in the burn zone.
“And see how many people are going to be there, make sure they have evacuation routes and these projects are more fire safe than in the past and ultimate need to think about and make sure we want to build all these projects in the burn area now,” Teri Shore with the Greenbelt Alliance said.
The development group for the hotel still can appeal to the Santa Rosa City Council which because of the tied-planning commission vote, will weigh in on the decision.