CanalSide Hotel Study Based On Year-Round Resorts

BOURNE- Selectmen’s consultant Larry Koff & Associates used existing convention hotels designed to be destination points in the off-season months as models when preparing a comparison of the fiscal impact on Bourne if a hotel were to be built at CanalSide Commons instead of the planned residential housing.
On Tuesday, selectmen heard that the consultants had compared the impacts of the already approved Chapter 40B housing development planned for the Bourne rotary site to the type of hotel a developer is actually interested in building on the site. That developer, Sam Park of Sam Park & Company of Boston, visited selectmen in August of last year.
The consultants used the Great Wolf resorts in the Pocono Mountains in Pennsylvania, at Williamsburg, Virginia, and at several other locations nationwide in their analysis. The information used to calculate the possible revenue and hotel tax that could come into Bourne’s coffers if a hotel were to be built at the Bourne rotary site was modeled on a 400-room Great Wolf hotel, along with some accompanying vacation apartments and an expanded retail section.
The consultants told selectmen that they wanted the numbers they used, and thus their report, to be reality-based rather than fictitious.
The off-season attraction incorporated into the Great Wolf resorts is an indoor waterpark, which would allow hotel guests to enjoy the water all year long.
According to Great Wolf’s online description, the company says its resorts include “an approximately 34,000 to 82,000 square-foot indoor waterpark highlighted by our signature 12-level treehouse water fort.”
That fort is described as an interactive water experience for families that features over 60 water effects, including spray guns, fountains, valves and hoses, has cargo netting and suspension bridges, and an oversized bucket that dumps between 700 and 1,000 gallons of water every five minutes. The waterparks also feature “high-speed body slides and inner tube waterslides that wind in and out of the building into a splash-down pool, a lazy river, activity pools and large free-form hot tubs.”
All room rates include use of the waterpark by four to six guests, depending on the type of room, the site said.
Mr. Koff said the Great Wolf parks are not open for use by anyone other than guests.
The consultants’ fiscal analysis, based on that model, concluded that an off-season destination hotel with an accompanying retail area could provide Bourne with some $1.5 million to $1.7 million in net revenue as compared with $30,000 to $374,000 from the residential plus retail project currently planned.
The consultants went through the methodology and analysis they used to determine the number of schoolchildren, public safety services, town departmental services, and other municipal costs of each of the two alternatives.
An extra firefighter would probably be needed under both scenarios, for example, while another health inspector would be needed to deal with the inspections required by a hotel with a waterpark.
The hotel scenario would expand the currently planned 85,000 square feet of retail space to an eventual 130,000 square feet and add 100 vacation units to the site’s already planned 150 top-of-shop apartments.
Part of the package selectmen received was a conceptual site plan, showing the already planned retail area and the hotel and resort facilities outlined on the land as Phase I, with the expanded 40,000 square feet of retail and the area containing vacation units as Phase II.
Mr. Koff and his associate, Roberta Cameron, concluded by saying that, as well as being more profitable for the town, a destination commercial use would make the site a location for regional economic development, would fill in a market area gap in hotel and retail services, and provide an opportunity for infrastructure improvement.
Although Mr. Koff made it clear that the traffic impact of the project was not a part of the fiscal analysis, the destination hotels they chose for a model attracted people off-season, he said. Further, selectmen heard that Mr. Park was a traffic engineer as well as a developer, and had some ideas as to improved traffic flow for the site.
Selectmen questioned whether the school impacts in the completed analysis were low, as did Robert Gaynor of the Bourne Zoning Board of Appeals, but consultants said their figures were in line with the school age population in existing areas such as Mashpee Commons and Pinehills.
The analysis posited from a low of three to a high of 30 schoolchildren for the hotel scenario, and from 31 to 79 in the affordable housing scenario.
The report said Bourne schools had the physical capacity to accommodate that number of children, but Mr. Gaynor and others suggested that if other planned and town-approved housing developments were built, that capacity might quickly disappear.
Selectmen also worried that the $1,897,000 in total revenue the report said would be generated by a destination hotel was too high. That revenue, some $905,000 of which was expected to come from room tax, was based on $250 a night per room.
The hotel used for the analysis would be much larger and more intense than any other hotel on Cape Cod.
Selectman Mary S. Meli asked the consultants if they had considered using the Cape Codder Resort on Route 132 in Hyannis as a model, since it incorporated a wave pool and other amenities and were told that they had not.
Selectmen Chairman Stephen F. Mealy asked the consultants if they could add a third scenario to their report, providing the board with an analysis of a hotel that was more typical of “what we see today on Cape Cod.”
The consultants said they would do so, adding that they thought even a downsized hotel would generate more revenue than the residential and smaller scale retail development currently planned.
The consultants had begun their presentation by thanking Town Administrator Thomas M. Guerino, Town Planner Coreen V. Moore, Finance Director Linda A. Marzelli, and Planning Board Chairman Christopher J. Farrell for their assistance in providing information.
Selectmen voted to accept the plan and thanked the consultants, in turn, for their work.