Board upholds planning director: appeal to reestablish suite‑hotel use at 1330 15th Street denied

The Zoning Board of Adjustment on Sept. 8 denied an owner’s appeal seeking to reinstate a nonconforming suite‑hotel use at 1330 Fifteenth Street, voting 6‑0 to affirm a Planning Director decision that the owner had not preserved or demonstrated an uninterrupted right to that nonconforming use.

The appeal followed earlier Board action in May and a motion for reconsideration after the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) completed a report that the board requested. Attorney Philip Hudson, representing the owner, argued the OIG report shows the owner never intended to abandon or change the prior suite‑hotel use and that a flawed application and miscommunication between the owner’s permit expediter and city intake staff led to an incorrect CU/BTR (certificate of use/business tax receipt) being issued for non‑transient apartments instead of a hotel. Hudson said documentary records and his client’s testimony support the claim that the owner intended to operate the property as a hotel and that the city’s reliance on the flawed form should not extinguish a legally established nonconforming use.

Planning Director Stephen Mooney told the board the director’s decision rested not on any single misfilled field but on the written submissions that…