• Developers say parking more than enough

• 21,000 sq ft site for condo development

• Neighbours wary of use as AirBNB sites

By FAY SIMMONS

Tribune Business Reporter

jsimmons@tribunemedia.net

NEIGHBOURS of a proposed western condo development raised concerns at Department of Physical Planning public hearing last night.

The developers of the Neveah Group Enterprises’ Palazzo Vista Del Mar project - to be located on a 21,000 square foot site south of Da Plantation Bar and Grill off West Bay Street fielded questions about parking, road access and occupancy expectations from concerned residents.

The luxury condo project will feature a total of 20 units and nearby residents were concerned if the 30 parking spots allocated for the development were sufficient.

Mr Pratt, who delivered the architectural plans on behalf of the group, said the parking spaces allocated were “more than enough” as each unit was assigned one and a half parking spaces.

He maintained it was a standard amount of parking spaces per unit and that parking will be on the ground floor and it is not possible to include a lower parking level in the design.

He said: “Well, we have 30 parking spots allocated and it’s more than enough. So a unit normally has one and a half parking space per unit.

“So we have adequate parking without having to go down another level of parking and I don’t see it possible to do another level of parking because we get to look at drainage and we don’t want to put a sump pump concept there, that’d be hazardous.

“So we have parking on the whole lower floor. That’s why we didn’t put anything on that ground floor except parking and then extending that parking outside of the footprint of the building.”

Other neighbours raised concerns about the number of occupants the condominium will host.

The developers maintained the units will be occupied mainly by couples, so at full occupancy it may include 40 persons.

“Couples max, maybe kids, but I’m looking at couples. We’re not really catering to the whole family with all the amenities. We’re catering more or less to a couple, married couples you know, that will reside in these units”, said Mr Pratt.

“So it is not, and we only have 20 units and for them to be 100 percent occupied well we have twenty times two max.”

Neighbours argued that the units contain three bedrooms and can be used as AirBnBs so there is no guarantee that guests will not utilise all bedrooms to facilitate up to five guests.

“You can’t justify how many persons are going to be in the unit, so you have to times every unit by if its three bedrooms you guarantee that it’s going to be three or four or five persons, so you can’t just say 20 people,” said an attendee.

Neighbours also questioned how the development would affect traffic on Atlantic Boulevard, which they contended was a private road and residents should not be inconvenienced by construction.

“At this point, there’s only one access to that, Atlantic Boulevard, again is not accessible. It’s not accessible at this point because again, the road is a private road it’s not a government road, so what is being done to make sure that residents that have developments in the back area is not impeded by the construction”, said an attendee.

The project aims to create 100 to 150 jobs with an investment value of between $18m to $20m.

The units will be priced at between $700,000 and $1.2m and will take 12 to 18 months to construct over two phases.