WINSLOW HOTEL HEARING: Exhibits pile up for examiner’s review

Bainbridge Island’s hearing examiner had a heck of a reading list before the start of Thursday’s public hearing on the Winslow Hotel proposal.

The exhibit list for the controversial project — an 87-room hotel at the western end of Winslow’s main drag — is more than a thousand pages long.

The exhibit list — which would use more than two reams of copy paper and create a file almost 4 1/2 inches thick if printed — includes the plans for the hotel, staff reports and reviews.

The most recent item added to the exhibit list, and the first exhibit in the package, is what pushed the document over a thousand pages. It’s Planning Director Heather Wright’s 46-page report and recommendation, the final review of the development plan before the proposal was sent to the hearing examiner for a decision.

In Wright’s report, released a week ago, the planning chief said the Winslow Hotel project should be approved, and with the addition of specific development conditions, meets the city’s plans, policies and development regulations. Conditions added to the project include the installation of a 6-foot-wide bike lane by the hotel, a new crosswalk on Winslow Way, a shuttle for hotel guests that would run to the ferry, a shared bicycle program that would provide a minimum of 36 bicycles for hotel guests, and a pavilion in Waterfront Park.

The exhibit list also includes individual plans that cover tree retention and landscaping, lighting, parking and valet stacking, as well as a parking study, traffic impact analysis, certificate of concurrency, a water-sewer availability letter, correspondence with an acoustical engineer, design guideline checklist, tree report, arborist report, parking analysis update, the Design Review Board’s findings and recommendations, and the planning commission’s findings of facts and conclusions.

Tapping out at a total of 1,006 pages, most of the exhibit list is made up of public comment letters and emails.

Public comment on the proposal consumes 590 pages of the exhibit list, and stretches from February 2019 to the last public comment period in November 2019.

Public comments submitted outside the time frame of official comment periods have also been included in the exhibits.