Route 9 hotel and apartment plan goes to design board Oct. 7

A proposal to build a 120-room hotel, 128 apartments and about 8,000 square feet of retail along South Broadway in Saratoga Springs goes before the city’s Design Review Board on Wednesday, Oct. 7. The board is scheduled to give the Planning Board an advisory opinion on the project, according to the agenda the city posted for the meeting.

The developer, Matrix BDC JV, LLC, calls the project TownePlace Suites Saratoga & Hemlock Woods Mixed Use Development, The Daily Gazette reported in August. TownePlace Suites is Marriott’s extended-stay hotel brand. The site is on Route 9 at the city’s southern entrance, directly next to Homewood Suites by Hilton Saratoga Springs and near Tree House Brewing Company, across the road from Saratoga Spa State Park.

What is proposed

The plan, as described in the Gazette and in the Planning Board’s March 12 minutes, has these pieces.

• Six buildings: a 120-room hotel and five residential buildings with ground-floor commercial space, according to the Gazette.
• 128 apartments. The zoning would allow up to 159 units on the site, Planning Board member Mike King noted in March.
• About 8,000 square feet of retail. No tenants have been named; the applicant’s attorney told the board in March that the filing lists 20 kinds of businesses that could fit the space.
• A special use permit to allow apartments on the ground floor of four of the residential buildings, where the zoning otherwise calls for commercial space.
• Setbacks of 80 feet for the front mixed-use building and 150 feet for the hotel, against a 60-foot minimum, according to the March minutes.

Matrix plans to develop about 11 acres, the Gazette reported. In March, the project’s engineer told the Planning Board that 42 acres, or 85 percent of the site, would be preserved, and that nothing is proposed inside the state-regulated wetlands or their buffer.

Who is behind it

John Cannie of Cannie Law represented the project at the March 12 meeting, joined by Bhavik Jarlwala of Matrix Hotels and the BDC Group, engineers from Bohler Engineering, traffic engineer Gordon Stansbury of GTS Consulting and the project architect from Balzer & Tuck, according to the minutes.

The concerns raised so far

The land is in the city’s Gateway Commercial-Rural district, which the zoning code describes as meant for commercial development with a suitably rural, low-intensity character, the Gazette reported. Critics say the project fits the zoning’s dimensions but not the 2015 Comprehensive Plan’s goals for the city’s entrances. These are the main objections on the record.

• Sustainable Saratoga warned that approving projects like this one could set a precedent for denser building at the gateways. Executive director Kelsey Trudell told the Gazette she sees a “slippery slope” toward more urban design there.
• The state Department of Transportation, which has to issue a work permit for the Route 9 driveways, wrote to the Planning Board that the project creates dependence on cars, could add congestion and blurs the line between the city’s urban and rural areas, according to the Gazette.
• Planning Board members focused on safety on a stretch of Route 9 posted at 55 mph. Member William McTygue said in March he would compromise on site design but not on safety, according to the minutes.
• Members pressed for a 10-foot multi-use path along the frontage and for more of the existing trees to be saved. Chair Mark Pingel said the plan would clear the site and replant small trees that would take 20 years to grow, the minutes show.
• Members also questioned the retail space. The applicant’s market data counted more than 81,000 square feet of commercial space available in the city, and member Alex White said the number needed a breakdown by type before the board could rely on it.

The applicant’s side has answers on traffic. The traffic engineer told the board in March that the study found enough gaps for turning traffic, sight lines of more than 1,500 feet from the driveways and no significant crash history, and that nearby signals would keep operating at level of service C or better. The north driveway is proposed as right in, right out only, with no left turns.

What the Oct. 7 meeting can and cannot do

The Design Review Board’s role on Oct. 7 is advisory. The Planning Board decides the special use permit and the site plan, and it has to finish the state environmental review, known as SEQRA, before it can rule. The Planning Board opened a public hearing on the special use permit on March 12, and that hearing stays open until the board decides, according to the minutes. The design board also discussed the project at its Sept. 23 meeting, as we reported in our Sept. 25 story.

This is not the only 120-room hotel under review in the city. A five-story building with a 120-room hotel and 21 apartments at 11 Federal Street downtown is also before the Planning Board, which voted 6-0 on Sept. 10 to seek lead agency status for its environmental review, according to the board’s draft minutes.

How to attend or comment

The meeting is open to the public. Here is what the agenda says about taking part.

• The Design Review Board meets Wednesday, Oct. 7, at 6 p.m. in the Council Room at City Hall, 474 Broadway.
• Written comments can be sent until noon on the day of the meeting through the Public Comment form on the Planning Department page of the city’s website.
• The ramp door at City Hall is unlocked a half hour before the meeting starts. After 7 p.m., use the buzzer at the Lake Avenue entrance.
• Meetings are webcast live and recorded on the city’s website.

What it means for the south end

Our read: South Broadway between Crescent Avenue and East West Road is changing quickly. Tree House opened its taproom in March 2025, Homewood Suites already sits next door, and a hotel and 128 apartments would add more cars turning across 55 mph traffic. That is why the safety debate, more than the architecture, is likely to decide what gets built here. The Oct. 7 opinion will show whether the design board thinks the buildings themselves fit a gateway the city wants to keep rural in character.

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