Arlie & Company

Press Releases

Arlie hotel plan gets date with city

Released: 05/22/2007

By Joe Mosley, The Register-Guard

 

A proposal to build a 120-room, extended-stay hotel in northeast Eugene will finally show up next week on the radar of city decision-makers.

 

Arlie & Co. - a Eugene development firm headed by John Musumeci and his wife, Suzanne Arlie - filed plans last fall for land use amendments for property in its Crescent Center commercial district so that the hotel can be built. Crescent Center is across Crescent Avenue from Arlie's ongoing Crescent Village project, a $250 million mix of residential and commercial elements.

 

The Eugene City Council will decide May 29 whether to consider the threshold issues of changing the City Code, the neighborhood refinement plan and the property's zoning designation to permit a hotel in the area currently set aside for "neighborhood commercial" uses.

 

If the council declines to weigh the land use changes, the hotel project cannot go forward. If councilors agree to get involved, the clock will start on a planning process that usually takes six months to complete.

 

"It would take months, for sure," city planner Patricia Thomas said Monday.

 

Musumeci said he hopes to have the hotel project - which will cost $10 million to $12.5 million, excluding the price of land - under construction by next fall.

 

His company is working with a hotel chain - which Musumeci said he was not at liberty to identify - to build an upscale facility.

 

He said the hotel company contacted Arlie & Co. to propose the project, which would serve existing and proposed businesses in the Crescent Avenue/Chad Drive area, as well as PeaceHealth's new RiverBend hospital in the nearby Gateway area of Springfield.

"From our point of view, it's a perfect complement to what's going on (in the area)," Musumeci said.

 

The hotel is proposed for a parcel on the east side of Suzanne Way, between Crescent Avenue and Chad Drive.

 

A pair of four-story office buildings - one on either side of Suzanne Way - were originally planned for the 10-acre Crescent Center development, rounded out with a mix of small retail shops. However, another developer built the first office building at two stories on the west side of the street, and Arlie & Co. has proposed shifting some of its already approved office space to the Crescent Village project to accommodate the hotel.


Thomas, the city planner, said city staff members have not yet evaluated the merits of the hotel proposal, but they are recommending that the City Council begin the land use amendment process.