New hotel in the works on Executive Parkway in Toledo

A new hotel, Home2 Suites, is being proposed on Executive Parkway.

A major site plan review for the new 109-room hotel has been submitted to the Toledo Plan Commission for its Sept. 12 meeting.

The site is zoned multi-family residential and office commercial. Hotels are permitted in office commercial zoning districts but not in multi-family residential zoning districts. The plan commission staff has recommended the hotel site be rezoned to office commercial.

The applicant, Jon Roumaya, of Toledo, has also submitted companion cases to rezone part of the site to regional commercial to permit potential future development on the eastern part of the parcel next to the proposed hotel. He intends to split the western 67.64 feet of the parcel off and combine it with the adjacent parcel to create the hotel development site. The remainder of the parcel would become open to future development.

The plan commission staff has suggested this portion of the site be rezoned, once the parcel is split, to neighborhood commercial, which permits many of the same commercial land uses that may want to locate there, minus intensive auto-oriented uses such as drive-through fast-food restaurants and car washes.

Regional commercial zoning is not compatible with existing land uses within the general vicinity of the property, according to the staff analysis in explaining why it recommended disapproval of the request for regional commercial. The staff suggested the applicant apply for a zone change to neighborhood commercial at a future date once the parcel is separated from the proposed hotel development.

“We cannot take a parcel and rezone only a portion of it,” said Alex Schultz, a planner for the plan commission. “Currently, we are suggesting office commercial for the entire site. Neighborhood commercial is just a suggestion. The applicant will have to do another rezoning request when done with the split, then take that remainder for another application to neighborhood commercial, and we will support that.

”To the north of the site are apartments and single-family homes; to the south is a donation center, a hotel, and a shopping plaza, to the east are fast-food restaurants, a jeweler, and a smoke shop, and to the west are senior apartments and offices,” he noted.

Executive Parkway was created primarily to serve office commercial land uses, as reflected by the fact that most parcels fronting on the street are zoned office commercial, according to the plan commission’s staff analysis. One of the benefits of the Executive Parkway office commercial corridor is that it serves as a buffer between the intensive regional commercial Secor Road corridor and residential areas to the north and west. The buffer is highlighted in the Forward Toledo Comprehensive Land Use Plan as an example of the type of buffering the plan promotes between intensive commercial and low-density residential land uses.

“Allowing an encroachment of regional commercial zoning into this corridor will set a precedent resulting in the remaining office commercial parcels becoming vulnerable to more intense commercial uses. This development pressure will begin to degrade the corridor, causing friction between land uses,” according to the staff analysis.

Mr. Roumaya did not return repeated calls for comment.