News

City Council OKs Fairfield Inn at Upward interchange

Map shows location of Fairfield Inn & Suites on Upward Road.

By Bill Moss, Published: August 4, 2016

The Hendersonville City Council on Thursday unanimously approved building plans for a new Fairfield Inn & Suites on Upward Road but not before an area landowner denounced the city’s annexation requirement as anti-growth.

The council approved the annexation and rezoning of the land on Upward Road at Education Drive and south of the Hendersonville campus of Biltmore Baptist Church. The council also OK’d two zoning code variances that the applicant said was needed to keep costs down and make the project doable.
Bob Quattlebaum, who sold the property to hotel developer Satis Patel in 2015 for $800,000, told the council that Henderson County officials approached him and another property owner, Dan Waddell, in 1994 and asked the landowners to put up $20,000 each and grant a land easement along their property for the Upward Road sewer line.
Patel and building contractor Chris Cormier, owner of Carolina Specialties, completed a zoning and building permit process through the county.
“All fees were paid, requirements met, construction was about to begin,” Quattlebaum said. “Then the city got involved and things started to fall apart.”
Although the North Carolina Legislature has virtually outlawed involuntary annexation, cities may still require voluntary annexation when a property owner seeks city services like water and sewer. Quattlebaum, who owns other property in the Upward Road, depicts that as hardly voluntary, since failing to be annexed would block a development permit.
Quattlebaum suggested that the closing of the BiLo grocery store at the Hendersonville Crossing shopping center and the pending auction of the East Ridge shopping center were symptoms of a failing city. He criticized an editorial in the Hendersonville Lightning that supported the annexation requirement, saying the editorialist failed to research property tax inequities and burdensome requirements the city imposes on commercial landowners.

The Hendersonville Lightning reported last month that council members became aware of the Fairfield Inn dispute and helped to guide the applicant and city to a compromise on the development requirements.

On Thursday night, when Mayor Barbara Volk asked if council members had any advance communication about the development request, three members said they had.

Mayor pro tem Steve Caraker said that he helped shepherd the applicant through the process once he became aware of the conflict.

“I ran into Chris at lunch and listened to his feelings on it,” said Councilman Jeff Miller.

Councilman Ron Stephens said: “Chris came to my office and we met and talked about it early on."
After Quattlebaum’s excoriation of the city as anti-development, the council approved the annexation, rezoning, special-use permit and land-use code variances the developer says is needed to proceed.