Troy

The Troy Planning Commission on Wednesday unanimously approved a 98-room Hilton hotel in downtown Troy, which developers are hope will open for business by August 2017.

The Planning Commission voted in favor of the 10,386-square-foot, four-story hotel on Congress Street between Sixth and Seventh avenues, as well as a parking garage with 58 spots under the hotel and a 32-space lot above ground.

The Syracuse office of Colonie-based Clough Harbor Associates is working on the project for Visions Hotels, a company that manages 39 hotels around the state including the Fairfield Inn on State Street in Albany.

The Tru by Hilton hotel would be one of the first in a new line of Hilton hotels that the company calls "simplified" and "grounded in value." Clough Harbor revised the site plans to appease several city concerns.

It added a third stairway near the main entry and elevators, slightly reducing the patio area, after a recommendation by the fire department; substituted thornless hawthorn trees for previously proposed pear trees; and added more color accents to the Sixth Avenue side of the building.

The developer, on its own accord, also added eight rooms to the initial proposal -— an extra two rooms per floor ----— bringing the total to 98. Clough Harbor and Visions Hotels said that because there are 98 rooms and only 90 parking spaces, they would work with the city to ensure adequate parking when the hotel is full.

In order to offset sewer and drainage from the hotel, Clough Harbor will have to take 0.6 acres where water normally fills storm drains and remove it from the system, in order to make the overall development discharge neutral.

The city has outlined more than an acre of potential locations where Clough Harbor can engineer "green projects," said Andrew Petersen, executive secretary of the Planning Commission.

Clough Harbor could eliminate the water flow by creating grassy patches or, more likely, by digging up pavement and replacing it with pervious pavement, which allows water to soak into the ground rather than flow into drainage systems.

Petersen said the "green project" requirement is standard, and that Clough Harbor will have to complete the 0.6-acre project "before they turn on a faucet."

Petersen estimated that the developers would try to start site work for the hotel within a month, saying they want to be ready for Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute students when they arrive at school in August 2017.

All four commissioners who were present at the special meeting voted in favor of the hotel. Commissioner Charles Thomas was absent.

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