New life could be coming to a long-vacant property on West Front Street next to J&S Hamburg – one of downtown’s last undeveloped parcels – with Traverse City planning commissioners set to vote Tuesday on approving a new four-story, 137-room boutique hotel for the site.

Great Lakes Capital is seeking site plan approval for the new hotel located at 124 and 290 West Front Street, with the building to include a restaurant, café, and conference/event space on the ground floor. A small whiskey bar is proposed for the fourth floor, while the basement will be a private, valet-only parking level with 67 parking spaces for hotel guests. A one-way drive loop off Front Street will provide check-in standing space for vehicles and temporary valet parking within the footprint of the first floor.

“The proposed restaurant, café, and event space also have access to large outdoor seating areas in the form of a seating courtyard on the north side of the building and a covered patio on the west side of the café space,” according to the site plan application. Architectural renderings show an airy outdoor terrace on the hotel’s north side with numerous tables and seating areas overlooking the Boardman/Ottaway River next to the Pine Street pedestrian bridge.

A memo from city planning staff notes that the property has a history of pollution. The site was previously occupied for decades by Grand Traverse Auto, with a repair facility and underground storage tanks creating contamination that eventually qualified the property as a brownfield site. The property is covered by a brownfield plan through the Grand Traverse County Brownfield Redevelopment Authority. Grand Traverse Auto was demolished in 2007, with the property sitting vacant since then. The planned hotel is also downstream from an offsite pollution plume to the south connected to a former dry-cleaning facility.

“The site is heavily contaminated with a series of monitoring wells along the riverbank,” staff wrote. “This contamination prevents infiltration of stormwater, necessitating a hookup to the city’s existing stormwater system. This part of downtown had a district stormwater collection and distribution system already installed to accommodate stormwater of the known contaminated sites. This includes an aqua swirl separator to add an element of stormwater treatment to that which is collected. The system was designed with the capacity to accommodate this development.” Staff added that the setup means stormwater generated from the hotel property “will go through a filtering system before out-letting into the city’s treatment system located on the west side of the property.”

The hole on West Front Street has been the site of multiple attempted past developments, with three approved in the last two decades that ultimately failed to materialize. The most recent was in 2020, when Great Lakes Capital pursued plans for a mixed-use development on the West Front Street property that would have offered both market-rate and affordable/workforce housing units. While a sister project from Great Lakes Capital moved forward across the road at 309 West Front Street – what became West End Lofts – plans for the northern site fell apart. Developer Jeff Smoke said the team’s inability to secure a variety of local and state incentives led to the change in plans.

“It’s very challenging to build (affordable) housing development without a true offset,” Smoke previously told The Ticker. “I think it was over four years that we tried to make it work, but the numbers just didn’t pencil out.” Smoke said a hotel would likely be a better long-term use for the riverfront property. “The land is so expensive up there, a hotel is a better product for super high-valued land,” he said. “We also think there’s a real need in the market for a premium, boutique hotel.”

City staff said several design touches are intended to break up the hotel’s appearance to keep it from being monolithically imposing on Front Street, including awnings and Juliette balconies, dimensional offsets, window glazing, clear glass along the ground floor, and a mix of building colors and textures. Staff are recommending approval of the hotel – which is a use by right and thus only needs to be approved by planning commissioners, not city commissioners – with several conditions attached. One of those is that Great Lakes Capital will work with the Traverse City Downtown Development Authority on developing and installing streetscaping improvements for the full length of the hotel property, including street trees, snowmelt, and a first-floor location for a bike/mobility hub.

Great Lakes Capital would also be required to work with city parking and Traverse City Light & Power to reinstall any parking-related and lighting infrastructure that’s removed or disturbed during construction, with costs borne by the developer. Where driveways cross West Front Street, equipment/pavement markings would be installed to inform drivers and warn pedestrians when a vehicle is about to cross the sidewalk as another condition of approval. Great Lakes Capital wrote in its application that “it is intended that a detection/warning system and mirrors be installed to alert both drivers and pedestrians that there is either a car exiting the ramp or pedestrians on the sidewalk in the vicinity of the drive exit.”

The city would require confirmation from the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy that proposed encroachments in the flood plain will not increase flood levels during the occurrence of a flood base discharge. Another proposed condition states that deliveries to the hotel between 8am and 8pm will be banned from the right-of-way and must occur in the property’s internal valet drop-off/pick-up area.

If approved, Great Lakes Capital representatives previously said they hoped to start hotel construction this year with the goal of opening in early 2027. Another new downtown hotel is also under construction directly across the river in the Warehouse District. Called The Syndicate, the 110-room Marriott Tribute hotel is targeted for a 2026 opening.