News

Homeowners pan proposal for extended-stay hotel at Blue Ridge Mall

By Lightning Reports, Published: January 29, 2024

More than 30 residents of Blue Ridge Villas turned out for a public hearing on Monday to express their opposition to a four-story 124-room extended-stay hotel in the northeast corner of Blue Ridge Mall’s parking lot.

Residents told executives with the developer, Cox Universal of Johnson City, Tennessee, that they foresee problems with drainage, parking, safety, noise, loss of trees and loss of views.

“This is a horrifying proposal for all the homes in Blue Ridge Villas and the other homes on Jack Street,” one Blue Ridge Villas homeowner said during a neighborhood compatibility hearing on the proposal. “This is a very, very bad idea. There will be more crime, more noise, more light. You’re going to cut down all those trees for your new retention pond… I am begging the city not to do this to its residents.”

The developers said the hotel, associated with the Wyndham company, would house mostly longer-term occupants, including traveling nurses, insurance adjusters, contractors and people waiting for a new home to be finished. The hotel footprint would be a little over a quarter acre and would be 51,670 square feet overall. The developer plans to add 76 parking spaces and use 48 from the current mall parking lot to reach the required number of 124.

Kathy Kanupp, who lives on George Street and also manages several hotels in Hendersonville, rebutted the developers’ assertion that renters of extended-stay rooms typically are quiet.

“I hear them all night long in the parking lot right now,” she said. “They are very loud when they decide to get drunk at night,. They are drunk and loud and abusive.”

Another homeowner said she and her husband stayed at a nearby hotel for about a month when they first moved to Hendersonville. The extended-stay guests, she said, were disruptive.

“I can vouch we had boomboxes, we had people behind the motel having beer parties and we had noise and trash,” she said. “With all due respect, I’m sure your hotel is going to be gorgeous when you first build it but I can guarantee you that there is going to the noise, the crime, the beer parties. I don’t think this is going to be a good idea at all.”

Several residents urged the developers to look elsewhere.

“We thank you for your interest in Hendersonville,” Jim Thompson said. “We hope you’ll look around. There other places that won’t disturb this many people.”

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