City Council restarts hearing for Moody Street hotel

A proposal for a new hotel in downtown Waltham had to relaunch its public hearing process this Monday due to a procedural error.

At Monday’s City Council meeting, City Clerk Joseph Vizard explained that the Jan. 12 public hearing for the construction of a hotel at 220 Moody St. was not properly advertised to the public, and so the developer had to restart the process from the beginning.

In his initial January presentation, the proposed hotel’s owner, restaurateur Michael Colomba, requested a special permit to construct a hotel with a floor plan larger than zoning rules would typically permit — the latest in a long series of proposals to redevelop the currently vacant site.

At a request from Councilor-at-Large Carlos Vidal, the council this week voted to enter all testimony from that hearing — as well as the subsequent meeting of the Ordinances & Rules Committee where committee members discussed the project — into the record so it could be used in the public hearing going forward.

The project’s architectural consultant, Paul Finger of Paul Finger Associates, presented a few new changes to the hotel plans at the Feb. 10 meeting. 

At the January hearing, councilors raised concerns about the safety of vehicles turning out of a driveway from a proposed temporary parking area accessible via Moody Street; Finger this week told the council that his team had edited the site plans to make that driveway entrance-only, so cars coming out of the check-in area would avoid Moody Street, exiting instead onto Pine Street through the driveway at the rear of the site.

He added that he planned to visit the Traffic Commission at its March meeting to turn some of Moody Street’s on-street parking spaces in front of the proposed hotel into a shuttle drop-off area to facilitate shuttle services for large events.

Finger also responded to questions from councilors. In response to questions from Ward 1 Councilor Anthony LaFauci, he clarified that the project team would be reworking a public sewer line between Moody Street and Pine Street, and expected it would be responsible for resurfacing the section of Moody Street in front of the site after the fact. 

Responding to questions from Ward 8 Councilor Cathyann Harris, he added that the proposed 42-room hotel currently planned to create a total of 29 on-site parking spaces, two of which would be reserved for the top-floor owners’ apartment. 

He added that the site currently did not have a plan for snow storage during winter storms, but that the project team would be willing to negotiate with the city about responsibility for clearing its lot and the adjoining city parking lot of snow during winter snowstorms.

“Everything is open for discussion – almost,” he told councilors.

The Ordinances and Rules Committee will discuss the hotel plans further at its meeting next week, and the project is slated to come back to the City Council by April 13. 

Harris, who serves as the chair of the Ordinances and Rules Committee, requested that the petitioner provide councilors with written copies of all zoning variances the project has received and plans to apply for in the future, all easements it needs from the city, a complete plan for parking at the site, and a schematic design of the building.