Yesterday the Cape Cod Times wrote a story about the Dennis Hotel Resort Zoning proposal being worked on by the Economic Development Committee. You can find that article here.
It is unfortunate that the Cape Cod Times focused on this section of the Hotel Resort proposal. In 1973 the Town of Dennis adopted a comprehensive rezoning. At that point in time the town decided that cottage colonies were not the direction the town wanted to go in and essentially adopted zoning that prohibited cottage colonies, leaving the existing ones as lawfully pre-existing non-conforming uses. In 1973 the town designated this area for hotel development and established standards that made the Old Wharf Road area the best fit for future hotel development – 40,000 sf lot sizes and an additional 2,000 per hotel room. These standards could not be met on Chase Avenue where most of the hotels were located, but clearly can be met where the cottage colonies were located.
The current proposal under discussion will have far more dramatic changes for Chase Avenue where we are talking about height increases that could promote reinvestment in the existing hotel properties. We are looking at increasing building height to 50 feet, allowing 4 1/2 stories, parking under the hotel structure, etc along Chase Avenue.
In West Dennis we are looking at placing the Lighthouse Inn into a proper resort zoning district. In both of these areas we are trying to provide the hotels with an opportunity to expand and meet needs of a modern traveler
Along Old Wharf Road we are simply cleaning up the existing zoning to clarify what constitutes a hotel – lobbies, accessory uses such as conference facilities, health clubs, indoor swimming pools and wedding facilities (including restaurants). For 36 years no hotel has approached the land owners.
In the Old Wharf Road area, however, in the past 5 years issues have arisen with septic that have caught DEP’s attention – specifically that individual waste water treatment systems were not appropriate for sites that qualify for waste water discharge permits (sites with 10,000 gallons per day). They have made a preliminary determination that the property owners are responsible for the waste water and not the cottage owners. This preliminary determination has led some of the property owners to start to explore their options – build centralized systems that could displace cottages or sell.
We do not want to see this area become strip motels like Chase Avenue but, should it transition, transition to an area all of Cape Cod can be proud of, thus the attempt to more thoroughly define what a hotel would look like in this “hotel resort district.”
The vision I laid out for the reporter is equally positive for Chase Avenue and the Lighthouse Inn area, bright shiny new hotels, with health clubs, conference facilities, New Year’s Eve events to promote the area as a year round destination. The vision carry’s out the ideals of the 1973 rezoning.
The Cape Cod Times clearly was looking to stir up emotion about changes that have been allowed for 36 years. Several times in my discussion with the reporter I noted that we were only tinkering with the existing zoning in that area. The more substantial changes are on Chase Avenue and in West Dennis where the Lighthouse Inn presently sits in a Single Family Residential zoning district. These changes were barely an after-thought in the article.
The framework for the zoning proposal has been on the Dennis Economic Development blog since the beginning of September. You can find the information here. Over the coming weeks, as the Economic Development Committee continues its work on this proposal, I will be posting additional material.
