The New Bern Board of Aldermen has directed the city to seek an appraisal for the property of the former Days Inn hotel on Broad Street. The move comes as the board has renewed discussions about how to proceed with the city-owned property, which has stood vacant since 2017.
Alderman Bobby Aster said he was ready to move forward with an appraisal and put the property on the market, as the city did recently with the Talbots Lot on South Front Street.
“It’s not doing anybody any good sitting there vacant, other than the people that are parking over there,” Aster said.
The city sold the Days Inn building, which is located at 925 Broad St., for $184,000 in October 2014 to Kepri Hospitality, LLC of Morrisville, in hopes that the hotel would be reopened. Instead, the building sat empty while the city tried to get the owners to either renovate it or tear it down.
The board finally took matters into their own hands and passed a resolution to demolish the structure, which was torn down in June 2017.
Since that time, the city has discussed a number of options for the property, including having plans drawn up for a potential mixed-use housing complex with retail space.
City Manager Foster Hughes said a consultant advised the city to rethink those plans. Hughes said there is currently no plan in place to develop the property, although the section that borders Pollock Street is being used for public parking.
Mayor Jeffrey Odham said he recalled a discussion about the Days Inn situation during his very first meeting as a newly elected alderman in Dec. 2013. He said some aldermen wanted the city to acquire the building and rehab it while others wanted it demolished, an outcome that is called for in the city’s Choice Neighborhood Initiative plan.
“I made the statement that sometimes you have to be careful what you ask for because it might just happen,” Odham commented. “Now the city has ended up with it and we never really did have a plan for it.”
Odham said at one point the city considered rehabbing the Days Inn building and putting city offices there. He said the New Bern Housing Authority had also looked at renovating the structure but did not have the funding or the capability to proceed.
“I don’t know that there’s very many plans or any developers that would probably look at that site and say it needs to be all housing,” Odham said. “Most of the suggestions that we’ve heard from folks that have come in and looked at it have been some sort of mixed-use type opportunity. I’m all for let’s get something going there.”
Odham said he believed the site poses a hazard to people walking in the area and it is “just a matter of time before somebody gets hurt.”
As a “corner piece” of New Bern’s Five Points area, Odham said he believed the property is a “vacant canvas sitting there and something needs to be done with it.”
But according to Hughes, the city’s hands are tied concerning any future projects at the Days Inn site. Hughes told the board that they cannot put restrictions on what a potential buyer can do with the property. He said a private-public partnership is off the table because the property lies outside of the city’s central business district, which encompasses Hancock and Middle streets as well as portions of South Front Street and Broad Street. The central business district falls under the city’s C-1 commercial zoning, while the Days Inn site is zoned C-3.
“Now could we extend the central business district? Yes, we could possibly look at doing that,” Hughes said.
One option for the city is to advertise the property for sale under the upset bid public auction process. Hughes said the property could also be turned over to the New Bern Redevelopment Commission.
“We can give it to them since they can put restrictions on property. They could do what they wanted to with it,” Hughes told the board..
Alderman Johnnie Ray Kinsey raised the possibility of office spaces being built on the site to house the city’s staff. Hughes responded that New Bern’s development services and human resources departments are “busting at the seams” at their current locations.
“I would love to bring more people into city hall but based on our configuration I can’t bring a whole department in here,” Hughes said. “We’re definitely looking at that as we continue to move forward.”
By Todd Wetherington, co-editor. Send an email with questions or comments.