PLANNING COMMISSION:
Outlet Mall, Holiday Inn on Route 13?

Assistant Town Manager Bob Panek

Assistant Town Manager Bob Panek

By DORIE SOUTHERN
Cape Charles Wave

June 7, 2013

Cape Charles Assistant Town Manager Bob Panek briefed the Town Planning Commission June 4 on wastewater treatment and development-related possibilities on Route 13 near the Cape Charles traffic light.

“One of the things this area needs is a hotel,” Panek said. “Something like a Holiday Inn, a Hampton Inn. To my way of thinking it’s no threat to the B&Bs or Hotel Cape Charles, it’s a completely different market.”

Cape Charles could attract a lot of people who “don’t want to pay $200 a night in a B&B,” Panek said. “There is a market for that $80 a night [room].”

Panek noted that the Ultra Triathlon which had been scheduled in Cape Charles for September 7 had been canceled, which he blamed on lack of hotel space. (However, Town Manager Heather Arcos told the Wave that organizers canceled the Triathlon after learning that a similar event would take place elsewhere the same weekend.)

Another development the assistant town manager envisions just outside Town limits on Route 13 is “a little outlet mall like Tanger Outlets up in Ocean City or Williamsburg, that type of thing,” Panek told the Planning Commission.

“One of the complaints I’ve heard from people vacationing here is that some of them get pretty bored,” Panek observed.

Town Council and Planning Commission member Joan Natali agreed: “There’re not enough places to shop,” she said.  To which Panek responded, “You can’t buy a pair of underwear in the Town.”

But Commission member Andy Buckholtz worried that Route 13 development “would be driving people out of town or keeping people from driving into town. The whole purpose of this Planning Commission is to drive people into this town,” Buckholtz emphasized. [Read more…]

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