By Jonathan Chess

Messenger Staff Writer

Back in 2008, a 7.5 acre piece of land was targeted for a 142 room Hotel with a 50 vehicle underground garage near the Bowman area. In fact it would be 900 feet north of the intersection of Bowman and Luther Road. For the past six years, the idea has made no ground, until now.

Hoss Bozorgzad is an American entrepreneur who was on the project team since its proposal. Since then, Bozorgzad has been attempting to find ways to fund this multi-million dollar hotel construction. He’s been turned down by banks yet he has kept his idea alive and has won a bid that will allow him to extend his permits granted in 2008 instead of expiring this month.

With Boxorgzad’s renewed permits, he and his team now have until September 25, 2016 to get construction permits for stores, restaurants, underground parking and an art gallery.

His development team includes the Shiraz Development real estate development group of Walnut Creek, Norman Nedde, James Nedde and Carol Babcock.

The nearby residents disapprove of the decision to extend the permits, especially Robert Chalfant. Chalfant who fought the original proposals also stated that there are issues in construction such as noise levels needed to be reanalyzed.

In a recent interview between journalist Gus Thomson and Rex Addison, who lives in the area also has her opinion on the build and stated, “It already has lots of wildlife on it – deer, birds raccoon and turkeys. A park or wildlife learning center would benefit the community. This hotel will benefit a handful of investors and there are already five or six hotels in the area that always have vacancies.”

Local resident Judith Voris stated that, “It’s pointless  to have another hotel built, we’ll lose all the beautiful sites and when it’s finally built it’ll just sit there empty and by then they may realise what they did was such a waste of money.”

Another local resident, Carina Mccormack stated that, “We’re not really a tourist stop to start with, plus we’ve already got plenty of hotels, so what’s the point?”

The planning commissioner of the project, Richard Roccucci feels that there is no issue about the past approvals, but whether or not a new review would be authorized since the previous review several years ago and could possibly be denied permissions.