A building permit has been granted for the $12 million hotel-restaurant project near the Detroit Lakes beach, and a city official said it appears to be on track to start this fall as planned.
“They’re moving ahead in a way that would make me believe they’re still looking to start this fall,” said Detroit Lakes Community Development Director Larry Remmen.
“The building permit has been approved, everything is moving ahead … It’s just taking them a little longer to close on their property than they thought.”
The planned unit development includes a 69-unit Fairfield Inn & Suites by Marriott, nine condominiums and a 4,000 square foot restaurant on the site of the former Capri Motel and surrounding commercial and residential property.
When first proposed earlier this year, the project seemed to fit nicely with the city’s long-term plan of a hotel on the corner of Washington Avenue and West Lake Drive, and city officials bent over backwards to make the project work.
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Variances were granted to allow the project to exceed the city’s restrictions on building height and impervious surface percentage, and to proceed with fewer parking spaces than required by ordinance.
Then came the backlash from opponents and environmentalists, culminating in a DNR threat to sue the city if the project proceeded without modification.
Even though the project in some ways would be an environmental improvement from the existing site, the DNR was not happy that the hotel project would have more than twice the allowable impervious surface, and the 52-foot-high hotel would be twice as high as the city’s shoreland ordinance allows.
Developer Troy Hoekstra talked to the DNR and agreed to make some design changes to the project, decreasing the amount of impervious surface, for example.
All city and watershed district permits have been granted. Property has been acquired and it’s not clear what the hold-up is at this point. Hoekstra no longer talks to the media about the project.
Meanwhile, it’s full steam ahead for another new project, the McKinley Plaza Project, which is being built on vacant land downtown near Central Market.
Piles of dirt have grown and heavy equipment is moving on the busy site.
The four-story mixed-use complex will house several businesses on the ground floor and 36 residential apartments on the top three floors.
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With the two major projects, it’s a banner year for building permits in Detroit Lakes, Remmen said.
