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Panel hears negative hotel feedback

Times Observer photo by Josh Cotton Cobblestone Inn & Suites is the proposed hotel brand that has been part of the downtown hotel discussion here in Warren.

The proposed downtown hotel project wasn’t even on the agenda for Monday night’s Warren City Council meeting.

But it still drew negative public attention.

Are there any public meetings scheduled on the project?

“Not at this juncture,” Mayor Maurice Cashman said.

City Manager Nancy Freenock said that a public session would be “futile at this point” until additional information is received.

“We have some survey work that was just completed,” she said. “Those documents aren’t public yet.”

Comments on the project were received by two individuals.

Jane Dunshie said she lives in an apartment above Erie Bank and said “part of the appeal that led to many of us leasing our apartments” was the riverfront view.

She raised concern about how the COVID-19 pandemic may have changed the need for a downtown hotel, given the number of people who have not returned to the pre-COVID-19 working environs.

She rattled off a list of the things she has enjoyed viewing in the Breeze Point Landing park and said that the park made a difference in her life during the lockdown portion of the pandemic.

Pat Evans, who said she is opposed to the hotel’s location at the park, said some of the people who attended a Friday rally on the project don’t want the hotel while others want to preserve the waterfront.

“I think we shouldn’t accept development just because,” Evans said.

She suggested the proposed brand of hotel — a Cobblestone Inn & Suites — wouldn’t be a luxury hotel and said a hotel there should be “something that is extraordinary.

“I think that that view should be maintained as a park for the public.”

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