River Link Hotels, which is based in Fishkill at 300 Westage Business Center Drive, has developed plans to build a 107-room hotel on a section of the parking lot at the Business Center Drive site. River Link, which traces its history back to 1984, operates a number of hotel and motel properties including: a Days Inn by Windham in Elmsford; a Motel 6 in Elmsford; a Holiday Inn Express in Newton, New Jersey; a Comfort Inn in Sturbridge, Massachusetts; a Hilton Garden Inn in Danbury; a Hampton Inn and a Hilton Garden Inn in Groton; a Courtyard by Marriott in Wayne, N.J.; and a Hampton Inn in Fishkill.
A four-story office building built in 1988 with 352 parking spaces is on the property and the River Link proposal calls for locating the new hotel on a section of the existing parking lot. The property covers 6.34 acres and the hotel project would be confined to about two acres.
The hotel would be four stories. Existing access to the site would remain as it is now, via Westage Business Center Drive. After the hotel is built, 250 parking spaces would remain.
Documents filed with the Town of Fishkill by the engineering and traffic consulting firm LaBella Associates indicated that the project site is served by a network of roadways including Westage Drive, West Merritt Boulevard, and Westage Business Center Drive. Westage Drive and West Merritt Boulevard provide access to the site from U.S. Route 9. Westage Drive provides two lanes of travel as well as sidewalks in each direction, and West Merritt Boulevard provides two lanes of travel in each direction from Route 9 to an entrance to a Sam’s Club location, and one lane of travel in each direction west of the entrance.
LaBella calculated that the hotel would not generate much in the way of traffic, with 46 total trips generated during the weekday morning peak hour, 51 total trips during the weekday afternoon peak hour, and 80 total trips during the weekend peak hour.
The firm concluded that site-generated trips from the proposed project will not have a significant adverse impact on vehicular operations in the area. It also found that a total of 164 parking spaces were used during the peak parking period at the site leaving 188 unoccupied spaces at the site on a typical weekday. Their study found that the hotel would normally have to provide 112 parking spaces. It took the position that because peak parking at the office building and hotel do not coincide, the 250 spaces proposed to be provided would be adequate.
