First look at new downtown Asheville hotel plans, Towne Place Suites off Merrimon Ave

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Jason Sandford

Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.

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elm_street_asheville_hotelThe Asheville Technical Review Committee on Monday will get the first look at plans for another of the long list of new Asheville hotels that have been announced or are in the works. From the committee agenda:

Towne Place Suites

Review of a request for a Conditional Use Permit for the construction of a 5-story, 65,246 sf hotel incorporating pedestrian oriented design and an associated 83 space parking area. The subject parcel is on 0.60 acres located at 39 Elm Street and PIN 9649-42-1474. The property is owned by Asheville Property Inc. and the project contact is Dan Pabst.

Back in 2012, I reported that the Elm Street location was purchased by a Greensboro-based company that owns and operates hotels. Folks who’ve been around Asheville for awhile know the Elm Street parcel as the former home of a Steak and Ale restaurant back in the day. More recently, is was La Caterina Trattoria restaurant.  Elm Street is off Merrimon Avenue. The property in question sits next to the Exxon gas station that’s home to the 51 Grille.

The technical review committee will also look at plans for the AC Hotel planned at the corner of Broadway and College in downtown Asheville. Construction of that project is scheduled to start early next year with the demolition of an existing parking deck.

From the agenda:

AC Hotel

Final Review of a request for a Level II review for the construction of a 9-story, 76,392 sf hotel and an associated 330 space parking garage integrated into the base of the building. The subject parcel is on 0.60 acres located at 16 Broadway and PIN 9649-40-4626. The property is owned by MHG Tower LLC and the project contact is Jesse Gardner.

There’s a slew of new Asheville hotels in the works. There’s one going up on Haywood Street right now, and there’s site work on another planned for the corner of College and Charlotte Street. A second hotel on the Biltmore Estate property is under construction also.

Here’s my running list of Asheville hotels planned or in the works. I count seven, with rumors of three more.

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Jason Sandford

Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.

  • 1

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4 Comments

  1. Murphy December 4, 2014

    That location is a bitch to get to in a car…there is no access to it from the exit ramp (and I’m sure there will not be one allowed),

    https://www.google.com/maps/@35.6002809,-82.5516277,17z

    folks would need to know that they have to exit onto Merrimon and loop around on Orange Street and back to Elm to gain access… or exit at Charlotte Street and then take the “on ramp” to Orchard to Elm…

    Reply
  2. orulz December 1, 2014

    This does strike me as a bit of a “B” location, on the other side of 240 from downtown, fronting the Merrimon Avenue interchange. If I were staying at that hotel and walking downtown, I would probably walk down Elm to Central to avoid the interchange, but that does take you out of your way.

    NCDOT does have a $31 million plan floating around to completely overhaul and modernize that interchange (Project ID H090832) but who knows when this might ever happen. We get the complete draft statewide transportation program for the next 10 years sometime this month and that’s when we will see if it made the cut. My money says the I-26 widening and connector projects will squeeze basically everything else out.

    Reply
  3. Z November 30, 2014

    Man, putting a hotel right there at the merrimon exit off 240 seems like a horrible idea.

    Reply
  4. hauntedheadnc November 30, 2014

    I notice that that list contains a major expansion of the Turtle Creek Apartments (excuse me — Hawthorne at Southside Apartments, ever since their visit from the pretentiousness fairy). I’m guessing that means the new apartments will go in on what they currently call their “nature trail,” but but which is actually a boggy, brambly area where homeless people camp from time to time.

    One the one hand, I like to see the built up areas filling in, and I hope the glut of apartments puts some downward pressure on rents, but on the other hand, with a little work they could have had a nice little actual nature trail there. In the spring and summer, if you could ignore the sleeping bags and broken bottles, and watched for snakes, it was actually quite pretty.

    Reply

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