The City of Driggs will allow Huntsman Springs to build a luxury resort hotel at the north end of the development with some conditions attached. Mainly, the development has to submit a plan to the city to clean up and beautify the vacant areas around the Teton County courthouse, a document on how the hotel would benefit local businesses and a housing study on where the estimated 186 employees of the five-star establishment would live.

The city received substantial public comment regarding the hotel, including some that were worried over the location of structure and about the shops and retail spaces that would be around the hotel, and what those might take away businesses in the downtown.

In response, the city limited the commercial space to 10,000 square feet, with 4,000 of that not to be used for sales for the first three years. In that time it will be used for employee training.

Councilman Ralph Mossman also inserted a requirement that Huntsman submits a document that outlines how the hotel will boost Driggs downtown retailers and the newly built Geotourism Center.

Vice President with Panorama International, a hotel planning company contacted by Huntsman, Corey Hoffpauir said that hotel should drive economic activity to the surrounding communities, not take it away. He cited an Oxford University study that showed that for every job in a nearby resort hotel, four jobs would be created in the surrounding town.

He also said, on average, hotel guests spent $125 outside the resort.

“People travel to a resort to see the community, the hotel is a staging area,” he said. “People travel to travel.”

The other main public concern expressed not only in the public hearing portion of the meeting, but also in letters to the city, was that Huntsman was shifting its priority from the proposed hotel site near the courthouse.

As part of the approval of the hotel, the city required Huntsman to submit a plan that would help improve what has been described as the blighted area around the courthouse, including the vacant business class hotel lot.

There were also public concerns about the look of the hotel and how high it would be. Viewed from Highway 33, the top of the hotel lobby will be 52 feet high. That is reduced from the original design of 66 feet.

Some of the public comments at the meeting also addressed the height issue. That public comment section came after nearly two and a half hours of staff reports and several speakers from Huntsman Springs. At 9:40 p.m. when comments began, Mayor Hyrum Johnson laid out the ground rules for the public hearing, limiting each speaker to three minutes.

“I have a kitchen timer and I’m not afraid to use it,” he said.

In her public comments, Valley Advocates For Responsible Development staff attorney Anna Trentadue said that the city was “misapplying it’s height standards” by granting a height exemption using its Planned Use Development (PUD) ordinances, citing the fact that the city has already lost a court case for doing so on another project.

Later, city planner Ashley Koehler said that the city is not granting any sort of exemption but rather setting the maximum height requirements for this particular type of zoning, called mixed use residential one. Huntsman Springs is the only area in the city with MUR-1 zoning.

Trentadue also disagreed that the city was simply setting a maximum height not already laid out in the zoning code, saying the code gives 35 feet as the maximum height in MUR-1 zones. Koehler explained that is for regular MUR zoned areas, not the special MUR-1 that Huntsman Springs falls into. For that specific zone, design requirements are dictated by the Huntsman Springs PUD.

The city council gave its approval for the 52-foot lobby, contingent on a review from the city attorney on whether they are within their rights to do so.

VARD board president David Axelrod also spoke and clarified that the group was not against the hotel, but only had concerns about certain aspects of how it’s being done.

Park swap abruptly dropped

At the meeting the city also announced that Huntsman Springs dropped its proposed park swap. Huntsman Springs had proposed to give the city land for a new park, in exchange for reclaiming rights to the parks in the subdivision.

Huntsman first offered to give the city land on Bates Road, near the sewage treatment site. After public outcry, the former site of the Stock Lumberyard was given as a replacement.

The city held a public hearing on the swap at its last meeting, but did not close it, since then the city and Huntsman were waiting on the results of an appraisal of the properties involved before the details of the deal were finalized.

Before the appraisal could be completed, Huntsman withdrew the park swap proposal all together.

Koehler said that there were no planning or zoning concerns expressed to her by Huntsman before the swap was killed. Huntsman did not respond to a request for comment by press time.

This article appeared in the Teton Valley News on September 18, 2014.