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Dundee
to sign agreement with DEQ for sewer oversight
State's new math nips $400K from district's
budget
Friendsview breaks ground on new retirement
facility, Springbrook Meadows
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Planning commission approves Springbrook luxury hotel |
Plans call for a four-story hotel totaling 113,633
square feet, 85 guest rooms, restaurant and spa |
By David Sale, Newberg Graphic
reporter
E-mail David at
dsale@eaglenewspapers.com
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The Newberg Planning Commission unanimously approved Thursday a
conditional use permit allowing the Austin family to develop a
luxury hotel near Zimri Drive.
“This proposal provides a standard of excellence beyond anything
I’ve seen as a member of this commission,” Phil Smith commented on
his vote.
The commission’s approval will allow the construction project to
begin at once, as conditional use permits do not require the
approval of the Newberg City Council. A groundbreaking ceremony is
tentatively scheduled for September.
The hotel forms part of the Sprinbrook Village master plan of
residential, retail and commercial development at the northeast edge
of the city near the A-Dec campus.
Located on a wedge-shaped 36-acre lot, the hotel will be four
stories, but set back into the hill, with one floor above ground on
the north side, where guests will enter.
The hotel has a roughly K-shaped layout, and the final appearance
is still under development. However, artist’s conceptual drawings
presented to the commission show a facade with picture windows,
stone and projecting wood beams — reminiscent of George Fox
University’s Edward Stevens Center — but with fewer right angles and
a pitched, multi-level roofline.
“I was worried from the initial drawings that this would be a
concrete box from Florida, but the details are surprising,”
commented planning commissioner Cathy Sturr. “It’s not at all what I
expected.”
The largest single section, the southeast corner over the
conference room, will be constructed as a “green roof” with
plantings to absorb rainwater.
“We’ve designed it to have great rooms on each floor,” said
architect Alan Grainger of Seattle’s GGLO. “The top floor has luxury
suites with balconies, the bottom floor opens onto landscaped
terraces, the third floor rooms are level with the restaurant and
shops, and the second floor level with the spa.”
The building will have a total of 113,663 square feet of space,
with 85 guest rooms, a 5,979 square-foot restaurant, and 14,734
square-foot spa.
The last detail prompted the architects to request a minor variance
from Newberg’s commercial design codes. Beauty parlors are
ordinarily required to have one parking space per 75 square feet of
size, which would theoretically require the hotel to dedicate 197
spaces just for spa visitors.
However, because the spa is intended to serve only 51 clients at a
time, half of which are expected to be hotel guests, the Newberg
planning department agreed that the hotel’s proposed parking lot,
with a total of 374 spaces, would be sufficient.
The majority of the site — 83 percent — will be landscaped, with
numerous groves of trees and a slight berm around the perimeter.
Street trees will also be added to the property line along Zimri
Drive and Springbrook Road to further screen the hotel from view.
Guests will enter through a winding drive that opens onto Crestview
Drive near an existing residence, which the developers have agreed
to purchase from its present owner, and plan to demolish as part of
the project.
“We’re also granting an exception for the building location — the
C-2 design standards were really intended for construction along
Highway 99W, and in this case, it doesn’t really make sense to
require the entrance to be within 60 feet of the road,” noted Steve
Olson of the Newberg planning department.
As a condition of approval, developers will also lay new water,
sewer and storm drain pipes along Crestview and Zimri drives, as
well as carrying out curb-to-curb improvements on both roads. |
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From
Aug. 15, 2007, Newberg Graphic
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