Gulf Shores - Fort Morgan Hotel On The Way

Wednesday, January 18, 2006
By RYAN DEZEMBER
Staff Reporter

GULF SHORES -- City officials told developer Rick Fine on Monday to move forward with his plans for a Fort Morgan hotel, but stopped short of telling him that his proposal to build 15 stories was a lock for approval.

Named "The Sanctuary," its early designs call for four floors of parking, a fifth floor for meeting space, a restaurant and gift shops, and 10 upper levels containing a total of 527 hotel rooms.

Half of the 720-square-foot rooms would face the Gulf of Mexico while the rest would look north toward Bon Secour Bay, Fine said during a Monday afternoon City Council work session.

The hotel would sit on 12 acres that are surrounded by the Bon Secour National Wildlife Refuge on three sides -- south, east and west -- and near the Martinique subdivision.

Fine said he is in talks with U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials about allowing him to build a boardwalk along the western edge of the Wildlife Refuge's Perdue Unit to provide hotel and public access to the beach there.

As part of that, the developer said he'd incorporate an educational display about the refuge and its inhabitants in the hotel lobby as part of the goal to blend the project into its natural setting.

Fine and the project's architect, Dudley Flotte, said their finished designs would be an ode to the works of Frank Lloyd Wright, the renowned architect whose principle of organic architecture called for buildings' forms to match their function as well as their site.

"Frank Lloyd Wright was famous for bringing the outside in and we really want to incorporate that with the design of the building, with the design of the rooms -- lots of glass, open air, the pools, what we want to do with the nature display," Fine said.

"I hope this would be something that Gulf Shores would be proud of, that this would be a real good-looking hotel that people would remember staying in. ... It's an entirely different project than what you'd see on the beach."

Flotte and Fine talked of a 50-foot waterfall that would cascade down the front of the building and rooms that would jut from its facade. But first, they said, they need to know how tall their project can be.

The property, zoned for businesses, carries a 6-story height limit -- three for parking and three for habitation -- but if Fine is granted planned unit development status, The Sanctuary could eclipse that level.

"I'm looking for consensus here as a group that this is going to be all right," Fine told council members. "And if not, I don't know what we're going to do."

Of the 12 acres, 7.5 are wetlands. That means spreading out the number of hotel rooms and meeting space that is needed to make the project financially feasible is impossible, the developer said.

Essentially what Flotte and Fine want to do is take the type of building they would be able to build if the property had no wetlands and stand it on end atop the limited uplands.

Mayor G.W. "Billy" Duke III was the most supportive.

"I'd encourage you to continue on," he told Fine. "To me what makes it unique is where it is in relationship to that refuge -- it's not infringing on anybody else."

Councilman Robert Craft said that if the developers ask only for a variance in building height, and not in regard to other restrictions such as side setbacks, it has a better chance of winning his vote.

"I'm just trying to break it down into how many exceptions you really need," Craft said. "And if it's just height, at least for what I know and not having looked at the site, I would be inclined to support it."

But other elected officials expressed concern about the 15-story proposal.

"My problem is just the amount of height," said Councilman Philip Harris. "I don't have a problem adjusting height if you're going to be putting parking under the building and we're saving that sea of asphalt and we're impacting that site less -- there's some justification in that for me."

Harris, who had an earlier meeting with Fine and Duke about the proposal, said, "I thought we were more in the line of eight stories, which was a little more digestible."

He said he wasn't sure exactly what height would surpass his comfort level.

Councilwoman Carolyn Doughty wondered aloud how many stories the developer would need to make the financing work: "Is it realistic to think that you could do a hotel in three stories?"

"Nope," answered Councilman Steve Jones, who works in the hotel business.

"We very well might come down one story, but is that going to make a difference?" Flotte asked council members. "When you try to come down three stories and four stories, that's where you start having problems."

Councilman Joe Garris said the city needs hotels and meeting space and suggested that Fine and Flotte proceed to tinker with their designs: "Maybe we can help them, within reason, find the height that they really need."