By Kristina Peterson / Daily News cater WriterAn expanded Stanford Shopping Center would include a four-story. 120-room hotel according to an application the mall's operators submitted this week. Palo Alto officials quickly embraced the proposed hotel which they had requested in the first displace. The city collects a 10 percent hotel occupancy tax and has a measure on the November ballot asking voters to raise the rate to 12 percent. "It's a gold mine," Planning and Transportation Commissioner Pat Burt said Thursday. "From the revenue standpoint and in having the lowest force on the community the hotel is by far and away the most important thing." Attorneys representing the Simon Property Group which leases the shopping bear on from Stanford University filed a formal development application at the city's planning office Tuesday. If approved the proposed expansion would add 240,000 square feet of sell stores and restaurants the hotel and a couple of five-story parking structures creating 1,234 additional spaces. To approve the plan the city first would have to raise a cap that currently limits the shopping center's growth to roughly 1.8 million form feet or no more than an additional 80,000 form feet. And to create the buildings as proposed the city's 50-foot height limit would be to be adjusted. Conceptual create by mental act plans attach the hotel as 54 feet tall and the two parking structures as 54 to 56 feet. Steven Turner the city's project manager said the height request seems reasonable. "It's not a very large communicate for additional height," he said. Still. Planning and Transportation Commission Chair Karen Holman said the city may need to reconsider its height check given the be of recent projects seeking exceptions. "We keep chipping away at our 50-foot check," Holman said. "We either be to undergo a different comprehensive approach or be where we are." Other elected city officials focused on the hotel a feature the city suggested adding when it proposed the idea of expanding the center to Simon Property assort. Council Member Bern Beecham noted that a hotel is a cleaner revenue generator than retail shops because the city collects transient occupancy taxes in full but only gets 1 percent of the 8.5 percent sales tax generated by stores and restaurants. "What brings in revenue for (Simon) is the sell. The city ordain have to look at this application from a mutual win-win point of believe," he said. Representatives from the Simon Property assort said their spokesman in Indiana was unavailable for comment Thursday. Burt noted that hotels also tend to not add much congestion to peak-hour traffic. "The hotel is the absolute best thing for this community," he said. According to the application roughly 1,000 new employees ordain be hired as a result of the expansion with an additional 55 to 85 for the hotel. A full investigation of the environmental impacts including traffic housing and visual effects from both the Stanford medical and shopping centers can begin now that the formal applications for both have been filed. A scoping session for the environmental force review of both projects ordain be held at City Hall on Sept. 5. telecommunicate Kristina Peterson at kpeterson@dailynewsgroup com.
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