Sunshine Inn Ltd. was given the go-ahead to construct a 36 room hotel at the end of the month, with some conditions by council.
Houston council was reviewing Kim Tran’s application recently. Tran, the president and owner, already owns hotels in Burns Lake and Smithers and has sought to build an identical facility in Houston for over a year now.
Services to the property include a preexisting two inch water line and a four inch sanitary line. At this time, the developer feels this is adequate for his operation, however if it turns out not to be it would be at his expense and not council’s to remedy, director of engineering and development services Michael Glavin said.
“It’s a very nice looking structure,” Glavin said. While a landscape plan hasn’t yet been submitted, the developer has said that landscaping will include grass planted along its borders and shrubs planted as well.
“I’m satisfied it will be done,” Glavin said.
Most structures of this size would also require two loading zones, but without an attached hotel Glavin recommended council agree the variance for only one loading zone.
Council approved the one loading zone, and did choose to waive a security fee to ensure the concrete parkade and landscaping measures are completed before the hotel opens, however they did implement an occupancy clause on the developer.
Security fees, up to a cost of $128,000, are sometimes required but in this case they instead chose to impose a requirement that until all discussed paving and landscaping is done, within their two year time frame, they would not be allow to open their business.
“I’m so excited about this,” Coun. Joanne Dickenson said. “Let’s get going and dig some holes.”