Saturday, April 8, 2006 1:13 AM PDT

Riverbend Resort Hotel plans to set up a sales office this fall to begin selling Napa's first condo hotel on McKinstry Street, north of the Napa Valley Wine Train's office.

With wishes for speedy construction, Napa City Council gave final approval Tuesday for the 180-room hotel carrying the Westin name and aspiring to AAA's four-diamond luxury rating.

Council members were delighted that a riverfront project first approved five years ago was finally nearing construction. "How fast can you get this thing going?" said Councilman Jim Krider.

"I thank you for bringing this project to Napa. I think it's beautiful," Councilman Mark van Gorder said.

Intrawest, a developer of resorts in the West, will build and own the $60 million project, functioning like a regular hotel despite the condo financing, said Beno Nager, the company's vice president of development.

The rooms will be sold to investors who can stay in their unit for up to 29 days a year. When owners aren't in residence, the rooms will be sold by the night to the public at an average room rate of $275.

The city will collect its 12 percent bed tax on the public's stays. Room owners pay the bed tax equivalent after 14 days.

The city can expect to receive $1.5 million to $2 million in bed tax annually once the hotel opens in the summer of 2008, Nager said. The price of the condo units has not been set.

Dorothy Lind-Salmon, representing the Napa Valley Economic Development Corp., said the benefits of having high-end travelers staying in central Napa transcended the bed tax.

"You'll be able to keep people longer. They'll spend much more money. That's great for the city," Salmon said.

The Napa Chamber of Commerce endorsed the project, as did Arthur Jacobus, the president of Copia, the cultural center located downstream and around the bend from the site. Riverbend Resort will help make the Oxbow District a "vital destination," he said.

The hotel will have an upscale restaurant facing McKinstry as well as a 5,290-square-foot meeting area. There will be an outdoor pool, with views across the river of the Oxbow Preserve, the city's planned nature park.

The only significant criticism came from Friends of the Napa River, which wanted the hotel to be more welcoming to the public using a planned Napa River trail along the hotel's backside.

When the Planning Commission endorsed the hotel last month, Intrawest was told to sit down with Friends representatives to explore ways to improve the border between the hotel pool and the trail.

The hotel design is a good one, but not ideal, Bernard Krevet, Friends' president, said. Rather than delay the project, Krevet asked to be part of continuing talks on design specifics along the trail.

"We realize that a four-diamond hotel is not the place where everyone will go for a $20 glass of wine," said Krevet, picking an arbitrarily high price.

The hotel, which will have Craftsman-style architecture, will have the same footprint as the original Tuscan-style hotel approved in 2001 and the Mission-style hotel approved in 2003.

Developers of the earlier projects failed to get financing because of the poor tourism economy after 9/11 and never broke ground. In recent years, selling hotel rooms as condo investments has become a common way to finance projects nationally.

The hotel will have 160 rooms, with 20 of them two-bedroom units that can be rented separately.

There will be 233 parking spaces half-submerged beneath the hotel, with most guests receiving valet parking. The hotel has an agreement with the Vintage Bank next-door for events requiring more space.

The 4.6-acre property, now vacant, sits in the Napa River's flood zone.

Since the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will not provide protection for some years to come, the project is designed to have flood waters pass through the parking area.

http://www.napavalleyregister.com/articles/2006/04/08/news/local/iq_3378790.txt

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