Hotel proposal includes 136 rooms, up from 122

On Tuesday, Sept. 22, the Village of Patchogue held their monthly planning board meeting at Patchogue Village Hall.

Presiding over the meeting was planning board member Dennis Logan as chairman John Rocco had been unavailable for the meeting.

August Ruckdeschel, deputy coordinator of Planning & Zoning, addressed the applicants in the audience about a scam where e-mails are sent stating that the applicant owes fees to the building department for things like work permits.

“Unfortunately, you’ve been targeted through some public information out,” said Ruckdeschel. “We will never ask that you wire us money or do anything like that. So please be aware, I know at least two applicants received those emails. Do not pay that. If you have any concerns, call us up, we’ll let you know.”

“No one in the room owes us money,” said Ruckdeschel and was met with light laughter in the audience.

The first applicant was the Watch Hill Hotel Group, LLC, at 138 West Avenue, seeking to reopen/modify their existing application.

At a special hearing for the Watch Hill Hotel Group at the end of July, a number of amendments were proposed, including a new pool, but the request to increase event floor space from 120 to 150 occupants to 250 to 300 occupants and subsequent parking situation received the most concern from both board member Eva Rodriguez-Greguski and community members, who spoke, and felt that the additional parking required for the increased event space would impact residents’ quality of life.

In a separate scoping session carried out by the board prior to the meeting, it was determined that a separate, independent study would be conducted on the effects of the parking situation on LIRR commuters, residents, and the hotel guests/staff.

Logan said that the application would not be approved until a “firm parking plan” was in place.

The application presented requested 136 total rooms (the original application was for 96 and the July amended application was for 122), an increase of the capacity of the proposed rooftop restaurant to 256 (originally over 200, then reduced in July to 150), increase from two to three presidential suites, removal of the previously proposed spa and hot tub, an increase of 7,149 square feet of building area for a total of 124,054 square feet (distributed chiefly on the second, third, fourth, and fifth floors, an increase in architectural features to 75 feet, reduction of 6,721 square feet in ancillary floor area, and reduction of six parking spaces (total of 106 parking spaces).

For applicant Watch Hill Hotel Group owner Yair Yaish, James Manicone of JM2 Architecture DPC in Farmingville, addressed the board.

Manicone said that the bulk of changes to the proposed plans were in the additional 14 rooms and extended-stay suites to be added.

“We were looking at the rooftop patio and swimming pool, which we informed the board we were adding at the last meeting. We decided to put in a drink bar along, kind of parallel to West Avenue. And when we did, we have a covering over that bar because we were trying to maintain a certain line of sight, roughly 59 and a half feet to the parapet; this new element that we added impeded that line of sight… we shifted the bar towards the back of the building and in doing so, we could eliminate a jog outside of the building and when we did that, it created a volume kind of between floors two, three, and four,” said Manicone.

This change in the bar’s location and resulting additional space were then re-assessed to include the extended-stay suites, which Manicone characterized as a “benefit” for the hotel and the area.

Logan asked Manicone to describe the elements of an extended-stay suite.

“There’s no kitchenette; it’s a larger suite. It has possibly a little living room area. It’s not just your standard suite which when you walk in there’s a bathroom; there’s either a king or a queen-sized bed, or a double-king or a double-queen. This is just a bit larger. It’s meant for people coming in from out of town and the idea with the hotel, of course, is we want to attract businesses, those convention-type places where an out-of-state employee from another company would stay for two nights, three nights, four nights possibly, they would stay in the extended-stay suites,” said Manicone.

Logan addressed community concerns about the previous iteration of the hotel that included rental units with a separate entrance that Manicone had confirmed were no longer part of the plan and now supplanted by the extended-stay suites.

“It’s just a straight-up hotel,” said Manicone.

The event space was also moved from the residential West Avenue to Division Street where residents would not be as subject to the festivities.

There were no comments and questions from the public.

Brian Goodman, director of Development at GF Hotels & Resorts based in Philadelphia, who will be general manager of the Watch Hill Hotel Group’s Hilton, addressed the board and described the nationwide presence of his company as having over 170 hotels in the country consisting of Marriotts and Hiltons and that standard operating procedures were brought to local management who were trained at their own facilities. Goodman himself has over a decade of experience in managing hotels.

Manicone confirmed that the former Hilton Tempo hotel vision for the Patchogue hotel would now be a Hilton Tapestry and that the shift would allow more opportunity and leeway for carving out historical implementations like pictures.

Goodman and Manicone stated it was not decided if kitchen duties would be outsourced to a third party, although Goodman did say his company handled 70 percent of the kitchens in the hotels internally.

For high-volume bars, as is expected of the one at this Patchogue hotel, third-party vendors are typically sourced, said Goodman for “efficiency purposes.”

The meeting was adjourned to a special meeting on Tuesday, Oct. 13.