Aloft Hotel: Just the Facts

Tonight Beachwood City Council is expected to vote on

Residents near the development worry about the hotel’s impact on traffic, crime and their property values, but Signature Square's property owner and the developer say that the the hotel would align with the city’s goal of furthering economic growth.

The heated debate has been ongoing for weeks. Rumors have flown, arguments have been presented on both sides and it is difficult to separate facts from myths from exaggerations.

We rounded up ten facts about this development. Beachwood City Council meets at 7 p.m. tonight in Council Chambers at

The Basics

What: If the ordinance is approved tonight, it would allow a 135-room “lifestyle” hotel, along with two restaurants, to be built at Signature Square. Called Aloft, it would be operated by Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc. An Aloft is also being developed at Cleveland's The Flats.

Where: The vacant lot at Signature Square, located at the northwest corner of Richmond Road and Chagrin Boulevard.*

How: The site is zoned for office use, and a 1997 approved master plan includes an office there. The ordinance would change the zoning on the parcel to one that allows hotels and restaurants.

Why: Developer Scott Berkowitz and landowner Goldberg Companies approached the city about the possibility of building Aloft there. First the city considered  Council has since tabled that ordinance and is considering rezoning the parcel instead.

The Details: 10 Facts

1. Goldberg Companies and Starwood are bound by deed restrictions if the zoning change is approved. George Smerigan, Beachwood’s city planner, confirmed that the deed restrictions are being drafted now.

Pending the approval of the zoning, the restrictions will be executed. These restrictions include a ten-foot high retaining wall between the north side of the hotel and the residences on Bryden Road and an average check minimum of $25 and required valet parking at the restaurants.

2. The hotel and two restaurants that are proposed would increase traffic at this intersection.  the hotel alone will generate 5,350 more trips per week in that intersection. The office building alone is projected to generate 5,993 more trips per week.

To put this into perspective, on a weekday, the intersection sees 42,000 cars. The office is projected to generate about 1,100 more cars per weekday, or 2.6 percent more; the hotel, 750, or 1.7 percent more. The hotel will generate much more traffic than the office on the weekends – 1,600 total trips versus about 200 over Saturday and Sunday.

Since specific restaurant types were never chosen for the office, it’s difficult to compare their potential impact to that of the new proposal.

3. The hotel would generate less tax revenue for the city than the proposed office building. It really depends on the success or failure of each, but all things even, a fully occupied office building generally generates more tax revenue than a fully occupied hotel even including the bed tax, said economic development consultants from SZD Whiteboard during a presentation to the Beachwood city council last month.

4. If the zoning change is approved, the hotel will ask for two variances on the proposed site. The property has less space per room than what is permitted under Beachwood’s city code.* No matter where it is built, if the Aloft is built in Beachwood, it will require a variance. The other variance is to allow the parking lot spaces and aisles to be smaller than what Beachwood’s city code calls for. Smerigan noted that the zoning code was changed after development on Signature Square began, and the city has granted this variance to all developments that were in progress when the zoning change was approved.

5. The approved site plan is still valid, even though it was approved 14 years ago. While site plans expire after ten years, master site plans are approved indefinitely, and the 1997 office building approved for this site was part of a master site plan. However, Goldberg has to get final approval for a specific plan for this parcel of property, no matter what the company decides to build there.

6. The zoning change would probably not be ruled unconstitutional. Contract zoning and spot zoning have been ruled unconstitutional when a city imposed the deed restrictions on a property owner, or when a city applied deed restrictions from one property to the entire zoning code. The deed restrictions are not under consideration as zoning amendments, and Smerigan, developer Scott Berkowitz and property owner Eric Bell all assert that the deed restrictions that have been agreed upon were Bell’s idea.

7. There is a Dec. 1 deadline. Scott Berkowitz, who is working with Aloft and Goldberg Companies to push the hotel through, said that Aloft wants an answer by Dec. 1. If he does not get the vote by then, he said, he will have to go back to Aloft and ask for an extension. 

8. The zoning amendments and rezoning ordinances are the result of discussions between Signature Square, Aloft developers and the city. Smerigan has confirmed to Beachwood Patch that the hotel proposal came first. He added that the hotel aligns with and that the city pursue more mixed-use zoning.

9. Though the traffic study was not intended to limit acces to and from Bryden Road, it's a possible outcome. It may be safer for all drivers in that area if access is limited to certain hours of the day, or if Bryden was changed to a one-way street.

10. The original had two mistakes: one, it included the wrong square footage for the restaurants in the original 1997 master site plan; and, two, table 4 on page 5 had incorrect totals on the bottom line. The table was corrected in a revised version, and the report was revised to use seats instead of square footage on the restaurant comparisons. However, Bell contends that the seat numbers are incorrect.

For more viewpoints, see the PDFs attached to this article and click here to see the Aloft Hotel topic page.

*This sentence was clarified after original publication.