Three weeks before the city of Asheville changed its development regulations to give City Council more control over large-scale developments and hotel projects, Council voted to deny a 185-room Embassy Suites hotel proposed for 192 Haywood St. in downtown.
Under the rules then in force, the project required a quasi-judicial Council hearing due to its size —178,000 square feet — and its proximity to another recent, large hotel by the same developer nearby. On Jan. 24, Council denied the conditional use permit to developer Parks Hospitality Group on the basis that the project met only one of seven standards required for approval.
Now, the city faces a lawsuit from PHG Asheville LLC challenging the decision.
PHG maintains in a petition filed in March with the Buncombe County Superior Court that it presented “highly credentialed experts” and other witnesses at the hearing and that Council “quibbled or argued with every expert” and “held the experts to standards of evidence no one could reasonably have anticipated.”
It states that Council put too much stock in the comments of the sole witness who spoke against the project, Montford resident Charles Rawls, who expressed concerns about the safety of drivers and pedestrians at the entrance/exit to the hotel’s parking deck. PHG alleges Council overvalued this “improper lay opinion testimony” in its 11-page order denying the application.
The petition states the city created an impossible burden on PHG by “requiring it to anticipate and present evidence to negate every conceivable objection to the proposed use” and demanding a detailed level of findings not required by the city’s Unified Development Ordinance.
PHG further claims a violation of due process, alleging that members of City Council came to the hearing having already made up their minds to deny the permit. It states in the petition that Ben Teague of the Chamber of Commerce delivered a message to PHG attorney Lou Bissette a few hours prior to the Jan. 24 City Council meeting.
Bissette told Parks Hospitality Group President Shaunak Patel and Vice President Trevor Walden that Teague said the project had been discussed during a lunch hour among Mayor Esther Manheimer, City Manager Gary Jackson and Chamber of Commerce Vice President Corey Atkins. The petition states that Bissette told the hoteliers the message was that Council intended to deny the application if the hotel company did not contribute $50,000 to the city’s Affordable Housing Fund, agree to pay all employees a living wage and construct public parking spaces. The petition calls these “highly improper ex parte communications by decision makers prior to the hearing.”
Asheville City Attorney Robin Currin told Xpress a hearing on the lawsuit will take place on a yet-to-be-scheduled date in October.
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