Four-story hotel proposed for Rehoboth Avenue

The east end of Rehoboth Avenue has the beach and the Boardwalk, but it’s the west end that’s getting all the attention right now.

According to an agenda posted Jan. 4, the planning commission is going to review Limitless Development Construction Consulting’s plan for 330 Rehoboth Ave., which calls for a four-story hotel with dining and retail space. The property is located at the southeast corner of the intersection of Rehoboth Avenue and State Road.

This is the second time in less than four months a large-scale commercial development project has been proposed for the western edge of the city’s commercial district.

In October, Clear Space Theatre Company unveiled a 300-seat, 25,600-square-foot theater at 413, 415 and 417 Rehoboth Ave. The theater company and planning commission held a second sketch plan review in November, but no public action has been taken since.

According to the agenda for the upcoming meeting, the property is split-zoned, with 23,067 square feet of C-1 commercial along Rehoboth Avenue and 19,425 square feet of R-1 residential along State Road. The State Road portion of the property is currently a parking lot.

The review has been requested by attorney David Hutt, of the law firm Morris James Wilson Halbrook & Bayard LLP, on behalf of Limitless Development, a 99-year-tenant of the property.

According to Sussex County property tax records, J.J. Stein III Inc. has owned the property since at least 1900.

Limitless Development is a branch of Milton-based Lockwood Design and Construction, which has an office in the Rehoboth Avenue building. Prior to Lockwood, the site was home for 15 years to Ocean Atlantic Sotheby’s, which moved to Route 1, near the intersection with Route 24, in December 2017. For many years before that, it was a restaurant in many forms – Presentations, DiNardos and, most famously, the Sea Horse Restaurant.

This is also the second new hotel proposed to be developed in Rehoboth in a little more than six months.

In July, Gene Lankford, owner of the Atlantic Sands Hotel on Baltimore Avenue, proposed a 40-room hotel and restaurant on property he owns directly west of the Atlantic Sands – 17, 19, and 21 Baltimore Ave.

There was a board of adjustment meeting scheduled for December related to this hotel, but it was cancelled. Lankford was requesting variances related to constructing a motel more than four floors or stories above grade and to exceed the floor area ratio allowed for a lot area of 15,000 square feet in a commercial district. As of press deadline for Friday, Jan. 9, a board of adjustment meeting has been scheduled for Monday, Jan. 28, but the agenda had not been published.