ALAMEDA — A four-story hotel is on track to get built just yards from the Park Street Bridge in a neighborhood considered a gateway into downtown.

The hotel at Park Street and Clement Avenue — the site of a former car dealership that now houses a business that sells electric scooters — will operate as a Holiday Inn Express.

On Monday, the Planning Board unanimously backed the project, which has been in the works for three years.

But the board still wants the hotel’s architecture design to come back for additional review after it gets tweaked to better conform with the city’s design guidelines.

Board members also wants other changes, including an electric vehicle charging station in the hotel’s parking lot, plus a valet program in case the lot’s 62 parking spaces are not enough to handle the hotel’s 96 guest rooms.

“Together we are solving a problem that the city has always had, which is no hotel within walking distance of all the restaurants and businesses in downtown Alameda,” developer Paul Patel told the board.

The hotel will have about 12 full-time employees and is expected to generate up to $500,000 in tax revenue for the city.

Each employee will get an AC Transit pass to encourage them to use public transit and to help free up hotel parking spots, according to Patel, who is also a part owner of the Coral Reef Inn & Suites near Alameda South Shore Center.

Complimentary ride share services, such as through Uber and Lyft, will be available for guests traveling to Oakland International Airport and to Oakland’s Fruitvale BART station, as well as to the Harbor Bay and Main Street ferry terminals in Alameda.

Janet Magleby of the Downtown Alameda Business Association said the hotel will be welcomed by vendors at the city’s annual festivals, such as the Park Street Art & Wine Faire.

“Visitors want convenient locations that are safe for them to go to the major events happening on our island,” Magleby told the board.

Nearby business owners also encouraged support for the project, though the hotel also drew criticism over the amount of parking planned.

Ty Hudson of UNITE Here! Local 2850, which represents hotel, food service and gaming workers, noted that zoning allows a residential building on the hotel’s proposed site at 1825 Park St.

Moving forward with the hotel will undermine efforts to address the Bay Area’s housing crisis, Hudson said, and “will only create low-wage jobs, which themselves will not pay enough to live in Alameda, only making the crisis worse.”

Board member Ron Curtis said parking at the hotel must be adequate because it will impact neighboring businesses if it spills over into the neighborhood.

“It is a gateway project,” Curtis said. “It is something that has to be successful. And if we guess wrong on the parking, and the parking is inadequate, it’s going to effect the profitability on the hotel in terms of people staying there and what the they are going to be doing.”

Anyone opposing the project has 10 days after Monday’s vote to file an appeal against the Planning Board’s decision with the City Council.