Extended Stay Hotel Coming to Belmar

Very good news!

Plans have been submitted to the City of Lakewood for a 135 room Hyatt House in central Belmar. I reported last August that a hotel was still in the cards for Belmar, and now it looks like it's happening.

Hyatt House is an upscale, extended stay hotel, with apartment-like one and two bedroom units. Typically, they have on-site health club facilities, conferences rooms, and laundry service. It would be the fifth Hyatt House in Colorado.

The best things about this plan, however, is it's location: 7310 W. Alaska Drive.

Yes, this is the surface parking lot directly north of the Belmar Target and, in my mind, it's the highest priority for development in all of downtown Lakewood.

Currently, the parking lot acts as a giant black hole in the center of Belmar. The constant flow of cars into and out of the parking lot makes the area feel unsafe for pedestrians. In fact, it makes the entire west side of Alaska Drive feel empty of street life, which discourages shoppers at Target or Whole Foods from walking over and visiting the other businesses that are located along that stretch of Belmar.

If well-designed (meaning with lots of street level windows and some ground level retail), the Hyatt House could cure this.

I'm sure there will be some people who will raise a hackneyed concern over the loss of parking space, but the fact is that there's a multi-level parking garage directly opposite the proposed hotel site on Alaska Drive, a parking garage that sits mostly empty right now. In addition, the Target parking garage is rarely full, even on the weekends. In truth, Belmar is awash in parking.

So, good riddance to the black hole of Belmar, and welcome Hyatt House.

Update:

Here's the rendering referenced by Voland1935 in the comments. From the picture, it looks like the building will only take up a third or so of the current Target parking lot. Hmm. I don't mind surface parking tucked away behind buildings, but I'm hoping the corner of W. Alaska Drive and S. Vance Street sees development in the future as well.