After receiving a tip from a reader, DM confirmed with Decatur Asst. City Manager Lyn Menne that a new hotel is planned to be built on the land adjacent to the Courtyard by Marriott along Clairemont Road in downtown Decatur, just off the Square.  She provided this additional information about the project…

Vision Hospitality out of Chattanooga TN has plans to construct a 138 room hotel at 116 Clairemont Avenue adjacent to the Marriott Courtyard.   The proposed hotel will be similar to a facility Vision Hospitality developed in downtown Chattanooga that is very impressive.  The addition of these hotel rooms will allow us to attract some larger, regional conferences to the adjacent conference center.   The conference center is larger than the available hotel rooms at the Marriott can accommodate so the additional rooms at the new hotel make the center more marketable.  The Marriott hotel sales team supports the idea.   

They did request and receive a parking variance.  Our current parking requirements for a hotel are 1.25 parking spaces per room.  However, existing parking information from the adjacent Marriott showed that less than 25% of their allotted parking spaces in the conference center deck are used by hotel guests.  This number was confirmed by a check of similar hotel parking facilities in downtown Atlanta, Midtown and Buckhead.  Most hotel guests are arriving by transit or taxi and are not using a personal vehicle.   Keeping parking requirements down to actual use requirements allowed us to limit the size of the parking deck behind the building and assure that investment dollars could be spent on making the hotel facility as nice as possible.  

Photo courtesy of Parker Cross

Fellini’s, Commerce Drive, Decatur GA (pic submitted by Rodney)

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Comments close on Monday

From a press release this morning from the BBQ, Blues and Bluegrass Festival…

An expanded event site and new festival times highlight the 14^th annual Decatur BBQ Blues & Bluegrass Festival scheduled forSaturday August 16^th.

The main festival grounds will be relocated to 635 East Lake Drive in the Family Dollar parking space.

In addition, the festival hours will be from 12pm – 8pm allowing 2 more hours of great BBQ, Blues, and Bluegrass enjoyment. “By moving the event site to the Family Dollar Lot we gain a natural event footprint and remove the need to close any streets surrounding the Harmony Park area” said Festival Director Michael Vajda. “It also allows us to accommodate more people and thus raise more money for worthy neighborhood groups through our grant process”. The Festival has always attracted a great mix of local and national Blues and Bluegrass groups and world class BBQ and that will be no different this year.

Look for further updates on bands, tickets, and volunteer opportunities as we get closer to the event date at www.decaturbbqfestival.com

One more sketch below!

Bryan sends in this photo of the transformation of Yogurt Tap into “brain freeze” on Church Street yesterday as crews filming scenes for the upcoming drama series “Finding Carter“, according to the City’s Katie Abel.