Five-story hotel with a rooftop restaurant OK’d for Clovis. Here’s where it’s going
Construction is expected to happen in 2023 on a five-story Hyatt Place hotel with a rooftop restaurant and bar north of downtown Clovis, following the Clovis Planning Commission’s recent approval of the project.
George Gonzalez, a senior planner for the city, told commissioners at their Aug. 25 meeting that the hotel complex proposed by Bottom Line Developers would be built on a 2 1/2-acre piece of property west of Clovis Avenue and north of Highway 168.
It would be the second five-story hotel to be built in Clovis, and the first one with a rooftop restaurant, Gonzalez said. The hotel would also include a lobby restaurant/bar on the ground floor.
Bottom Line Developers partner Orlando Ramirez, a former deputy planning director for the city, said the project came to his attention during a courtesy planning review three years ago. Since his retirement in late 2020, Ramirez has worked as a planning consultant and joined Bottom Line in early 2021.
“At that time the hotel was in its early concept stage,” Ramirez told the commissioners. Now, he added, “we are ready to move forward with this project. We are excited about it.”
Developers responded to concerns expressed by the Clovis Police Department over potential noise complaints from music on the rooftop dining area by modifying their plans, agreeing to an eight-foot glass and block screen around the outdoor dining area to reduce noise, and declaring that no amplified music would be provided outdoors.
“We want to create a really incredible environment for people that are dining,” Ramirez said. “When you go to a finer restaurant, you’re not just hearing the clicking and clacking of spoons and knives and forks. We want to provide some ambiance music within the internal and external uses there. … Not enough to drown everybody out, but just enough to give you the experience.”
To reduce the potential for noise from the restaurant to affect guest rooms on the floors below, Ramirez said plans now call for two feet of airspace, padding and insulation between the stories of the hotel – a measure that will increase the overall height of the building to about 70 feet.
The hotel will be about 76,350 square feet and located near the southerly edge of the property nearest to Highway 168, providing parking lots as a buffer space between the building and apartments to the north.
The restaurant would occupy about 7,500 square feet of the building’s top floor including about 2,000 square feet of outdoor dining deck at the eastern end of the building. Diners, Ramirez said, “will have an incredible view of Clovis and the Sierras to the east.”
Details about who may operate the restaurant were not offered. “We are looking at high-end restaurants at this point,” Ramirez said. “We’ve had conversations with several.”
Ramirez acknowledged financial concerns experienced by another would-be hotel since it was proposed a couple of years ago for the south side of Highway 168, problems that were aggravated by the COVID-19 pandemic. He assured commissioners that was not the case for Bottom Line.
“We’re in a position where we have the funding now, and that’s why we wanted to move forward with this project,” he said. “We have the funding to start construction. … We want to start in 2023 with construction.”
