47-Room Boutique Hotel Wins Approval In Doylestown Borough

DOYLESTOWN BOROUGH, PA — A 47-room boutique hotel is coming to downtown Doylestown.

In a 7 to 1 vote, the Doylestown Borough Council on Monday approved preliminary/final land development plans for a boutique hotel at 57 West Court Street, the former site of the Doylestown Borough Hall.

Councilman Connor O’Hanlon voted against approval and councilwoman Jennifer Jarret did not attend the meeting.

In addition to the 47 guest rooms, the new multi-story hotel will include a 100 seat event venue, and a 70-seat restaurant.

The parking lot behind the building will be retrofitted to serve the new hotel with the east side entrance at Harvey closed off.

The parking lot will include 76 spaces, which meets the zoning requirements for the hotel. Thirty-five of the spaces would be located on the ground floor of the hotel where 11 parking lifts will be used to increase parking counts. Due to the constraints of the parking lot, parking will be fully-managed on site by a valet service 24-hours-a-day.

A garage level elevator will be available inside the hotel to take guests to the Court Street lobby. They will also be able to access the front of the building by using a sidewalk next to Villa Capri.

A street view of the hotel on West Court Street. (ALOK Investments)

As part of the approval, the council approved 12 waivers for the project, including dimensional waivers for parking, turning radius and driveway width, a waiver for street trees given the constraints of the property on its Court Street frontage, and for other routine and technical items.

Also as part of the approval, the developer will be required to submit a comprehensive signage package that will direct vehicles from Court Street to the parking lot. The developer has also submitted a detailed parking management plan to the borough.

To further shield neighbors from the hotel use, the plans include increasing the height of a fence at the rear of the property to eight feet; adding trellises to the hotel’s rear balconies to shield the view of properties below; and updating its lighting plan to avoid any waivers.

The plan also includes the construction of a “bump out” at the entrance to the parking lot at Hamilton Street to direct traffic exiting the lot to return to Court Street and not to make a right onto Hamilton.

At Monday’s meeting, residents living in and around the building site continued to voice concern over traffic and parking impacts to their neighborhoods, which abut the site to the north, east and west.

Harvey Avenue resident Geraldine Dougherty raised concern over the size and scope of the project and asked council to consider changing its ordinances in the future to limit the impact of commercial properties on residential neighborhoods.

"We're building too big of a building in too small of a place," she said. "And it looks like our zoning doesn't protect us."

Responding to Dougherty's concerns, Councilman Dennis Livrone, who represents the second ward on council where the new hotel will be located, said he's "looking forward to considering whether our zoning is, in fact, not working to the advantage of the borough moving forward. I look forward to working with other members of council on that," he said.

Livrone also commented on the plan before council, noting that while he doesn’t necessarily agree with everything related to the project, “We have these conditions that we have to live by and the requirements under the Municipal Planning Code."

With that said, Livrone said, “Between the qualified staff that we have and the cooperation we have seen from the applicant’s attorney, and the 'will comply' list of things they have said they will do, I think this project being built and becoming operational is going to be done with as much consideration to the minimal amount of impacts on the residents as can be done.”

When property owner Larry Thompson proposed the hotel project in 2023, he said it would fill a need in the town for hotel space.

Thompson said in speaking with Visit Bucks County, he learned that the tourism board finds it next to impossible to push Doylestown as an event venue due to the lack of hotel rooms.

“We have everything else - the walkability, the shops, the restaurants, the train. But we don't have the hotel rooms," he said. "So they were all excited to hear that something was possible because it's difficult to penetrate the Borough of Doylestown with a decent size hotel that would be a viable project."

Thompson also owns the McCaffrey's Simply Fresh building, the Chipotle Grill property and Lenape Hall in the heart of Doylestown Borough.