The Menlo Park City Council gave a thumbs-up Tuesday to developer David Bohannon’s latest version of his ambitious Menlo Gateway project, which officials consider a linchpin in the renaissance of the city’s eastern industrial district.
The proposed development on 16 acres near Marsh Road and U.S. Highway 101 will feature an 11-story luxury hotel and three office buildings totalling 694,000 square feet with 2,689 parking spaces and pedestrian and bike paths.
On March 5, Bohannon announced that he plans to partner with Ensemble Hotel Partners, a division of Ensemble Investments, for the hotel, which will belong to Marriott’s Autograph Collection. Estimated to cost $100 million, the 193,000-square-foot hotel would come with a restaurant, poolside lounge, a fitness center and 19,000 square feet of meeting space. Rooms will be available for about $400 a night.
“As you know, it took us sometime to find the right partnership to develop the hotel component for the project, but after years of difficult market conditions and an exhaustive search, we are very excited to be here to introduce Ensemble Hotel Partners,” Bohannon said.
Although the “new and improved Menlo Gateway project” is “substantially consistent with the original project” that voters approved in 2010, Bohannon noted that the changes were triggered by “the unfeasibility of the Renaissance Club Sport hotel and health club [model], which was discontinued in 2012.”
Cuningham Group Architecture has been tapped to design the hotel, which will have 250 instead of the 230 rooms initially envisioned. The additional rooms will raise the projected transient occupancy tax from $2.2 million to $3.3 million a year. Although the extra rooms will increase the hotel’s square footage from 173,000 to 193,000, the fitness center has been reduced from 69,000 to 40,000 square feet, resulting in a 9,000-square-foot net decrease in project size.
Bohannon noted that the developer is considering three health club operators interested in being part of the Menlo Gateway project.
According to Michael Moskowitz, managing director of Ensemble Investments, the luxury hotel will be “iconic” in brand and design. “We see an exploding business climate here but a very sophisticated clientele so we wanted to deliver a hotel that’s going to address that,” he noted. ” … Especially on this side of the freeway, there’s a real lack of … food and beverage offerings and … quality meeting space.”
The two developers decided to respond to that need with an “oasis” that combines metal and glass buildings around a central courtyard. The advantage of the Autograph Collection is that all its hotels are “unique to their area and their setting but they’re on the Marriott reservation system,” Moskowitz said.
Jeffrey Heller, president of Heller Manus Architects, which will design the office buildings, said people and sustainability are the heart of the project’s design.
“What we are trying to do with this complex, through the … network of sidewalks, bike [paths] and landscape, is to unify the area from — in a big picture — Belle Haven all the way up through to the [office] park,” he said. “And to facilitate the movement of people so that the place is more people-dominated than car-dominated and to try and look to the future [for] that kind of focus for the area.”
The project, positioned to be a “visual landmark” from Highway 101, will present wide sidewalks, an atrium, trellis, promenade and pergola, Heller noted.
Council members said they were impressed with the proposal but encouraged Bohannon’s team to explore a design that won’t endanger birds from flying into glass buildings.
The proposal is expected to be evaluated by the Planning Commission in June or July.
According to a staff report, if City Manager Alex McIntyre determines the revised project complies with previous approvals, Bohannon can prepare construction drawings and obtain building permits to break ground early next year. “The end result of the changes is that the project will be about 9,000 square feet less than what was approved and the changes are expected to result in slightly less traffic than was approved,” Mayor Catherine Carlton said. “[But] every month we don’t build this, I’m told we’re losing $300,000 in revenue for our schools and city.”
Email Rhea Mahbubani at rmahbubani@dailynewsgroup.com or follow her at twitter.com/RMahbubani.