Boardwalk demo on hold in Rehoboth Beach

The demolition of two structures that fall within the footprint of the One Rehoboth Hotel project in Rehoboth Beach has been delayed until after the planning commission rules on a request from the developer to make a minor amendment to the approved site plan.

The new 60-room hotel will stretch the width of the block from Rehoboth Avenue to Baltimore Avenue and front the Boardwalk. The project includes the Grotto Pizza and the former Dolle’s Candyland property on the Boardwalk, the Sirocco Motel on Baltimore Avenue and Kohr Bros. Frozen Custard on Rehoboth Avenue. Including everything except the underground parking, the total floor area for the 42-foot-tall building is 57,705 square feet. There is one loading berth and 62 parking spaces provided.

The planning commission approved the site plan for the hotel in January. The restaurant and motel were razed earlier this year, but the site has sat virtually untouched since late June. Site work was expected to resume shortly after the conclusion of the Sea Witch Festival in October, which happened to coincide with a public hearing on the request at a planning commission meeting Oct. 24.

At the meeting, representatives from the developer – a partnership between Grotto Pizza and Onix Group, a real estate developer from Kennett Square, Pa. – went into the details of the minor amendment.

The approved site plan allows for two levels of underground parking. The proposed amendment reduces parking to one level and moves the western wall 5 feet from the neighboring property. A lift system to stack cars would be used so the required number of parking spaces can be met.

There were some site conditions that couldn’t be determined until the Sirocco Motel came down, said Vince Robertson, the attorney representing the development team. There are unknowns related to the foundation of the Admiral Hotel immediately west of the property line, specifically the pool deck portion, he said.

This is a proactive approach to pull those western boundaries back away from the Admiral so there’s greater separation between the two, no matter what foundation conditions exist, said Robertson. Doing that results in a redesign of the underground parking, he said, noting that loading zones and the garage entrance would remain the same.

As part of the due diligence process, Robertson said they’ve looked at all the plans the city has on file for the Admiral, but there are no details on what kind of foundation exists.

In addition to Robertson, representatives included Meghan McDonough, a Newark-based professional engineer for Geo-Technology Associates, and Wally Funk, an architect for NORR, the Chicago-based architecture firm that designed the project.

McDonough spoke to the structural concerns about putting the new hotel’s foundation too close to the existing hotel’s foundation.

Funk spoke to how the new configuration of traffic flow and parking would still work with a one-story garage that has the car lifts.

Ultimately, planning commissioners didn’t feel comfortable approving the request at the meeting because they had too many questions about how the change in levels would affect overall traffic flow on the property. A vote was deferred until a later date. A few weeks later, the city issued a notice announcing the public hearing would resume at the planning commission’s meeting Friday, Dec. 12.