Steamboat Pilot & Today

Steamboat Springs — The Harbor Hotel redevelopment project tonight will make what is expected to be its final appearance before the Steamboat Springs Planning Commission. However, the City Council must give final approval for the downtown project before construction can begin.

The project, called Howelsen Place, will appear tonight as a development plan and final development plan. Development plans deal with issues such as mass and scale; final development plans address architecture.

Project manager Jim Cook has applied for a demolition permit to raze the Harbor Hotel at the corner of Seventh Street and Lincoln Avenue. The permit cannot be approved until the final development passes review.

There has been opposition to the project, primarily from people who consider the Harbor Hotel a historically significant structure. The hotel was built in 1939. It stopped operating as a hotel in 2002.

The proposed Howelsen Place project includes:

A 42,122-square-foot mixed-use building

A 41,915-square-foot mixed-use building

35 market-rate residential units

Seven deed-restricted affordable residential units

11 commercial units

48 spaces of underground parking

12 spaces of covered parking

A garden terrace

Street area improvements

Howelsen Place is a planned unit development, meaning it includes enough variances from city code that the project must provide sufficient public benefit to outweigh those variances.

Tonight's review will not be the last for Cook and the Howelsen Place development team. The Planning Commission is a recommending body to the City Council; the council must approve the development plans for them to be final. The council is set to review the project June 27.

-- To reach Dana Strongin, call 871-4229

or e-mail dstrongin@steamboatpilot.com.