Wilmington officials denied a rezoning Tuesday for the proposed conversion of a Market Street motel into efficiency apartments, citing concerns about the unit sizes, parking and resident amenities.

The owners of the Studio 6 Extended Stay at 4118 Market St. proposed converting the 76-room motel into a 76-unit apartment complex, including 20 units of workforce housing. Those units would be priced at 80% of the area median income (AMI) for at least 15 years. 

City staff recommended denying the rezoning of the 1.3-acre site from its current regional business district to a conditional high-density multiple-dwelling residential district, citing inconsistencies with certain city plans and a lack of resident amenities and green space.

The Wilmington City Council unanimously voted to deny the rezoning at its meeting on Tuesday. Several council members expressed concerns about the size of the apartments – around 250 square feet – and a shortage of parking spaces and other amenities.

The Wilmington Planning Commission approved the rezoning in a 3-1 vote at its March meeting.

Nick Silivanch, who represented applicant Premier Hotels LLC during Tuesday’s meeting, said on Thursday that he felt "shell-shocked" about the denial of the rezoning.

"It's not the sexiest project in the world. It doesn't look like it's going to be the Taj Mahal," Silivanch said on Thursday, "but it's innovative because it fits a need and helps fill a need right now for residents in the city to have a clean, decent, affordable place to live."

During Tuesday’s meeting, Silivanch told council members that the project would create entry-level housing for the community. He touted the project’s location along public transit routes and proximity to a grocery store, restaurants and other commercial services.

The applicants planned to convert a portion of the property along Market Street into green space and modernize the site’s parking, reducing the number of spaces to 68.

“Many of our residents don’t have vehicles; they walk, or they’re riding public transportation,” Silivanch said on Tuesday. “Most of the residents don’t have cars because they can’t afford them. This is like a restart spot in life, or it’s an entry-level spot after they graduate college and go out on their own.”

Silivanch told council members that converting the motel rooms into apartments without additional exterior changes or construction would help speed up the availability of more housing units in the community. He added that the existing building on the site limits what changes can be made to add resident amenities.

According to current rent limits from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, rent for an efficiency apartment at 80% AMI would be $1,083. Silivanch said the latest rent estimates from HUD are higher than the project’s developers initially accounted for.

Kevin Spears, the council’s mayor pro tem, said the project was a “hard no” for him.

“There’s no way possible you’re going to turn a hotel into permanent living spaces, and you’re not going to renovate,” he said. “You’re not going to expand the spaces.”

Council member Chakema Clinton-Quintana said she was concerned about how residents without cars would get around Market Street and about the size of the units.

“I don’t know that I would want to live in that,” she said, “but to each his own.” 

Council member JC Lyle said she’s open to compromise to bridge the gap between new development standards and the reuse of an existing building. Still, she said her biggest concern was a shortage of parking on the property, 8 fewer spaces than the number of units.

“This assumes that eight people who live there won’t have a car,” she said, “and that nobody’s visiting.”

Wilmington's director of planning and development, Linda Painter, told council members on Tuesday that the city is looking to support quality housing for residents and had issues with the open space and resident amenities on the site.

City Manager Becky Hawke added that the city wants to support the creation of quality housing options for residents. She said the kitchens in the current units have a hotplate and a microwave, and typically efficiency apartments have at least a two-burner stove.

“When we’re talking about not being able to fit in the green space and we’re talking about not being able to fit sufficient parking into it, it’s because we’re trying to cram too many living spaces onto a small lot and the current apartment rooms are not even actually the definition of an efficiency apartment because they even lack the amenities of an efficiency apartment,” she said.

“We would be able to do away with many of these conversations if the rooms were combined," Hawke added. "A true adaptive reuse would be to make these actual living spaces for these residents.”

In a call on Thursday, Silivanch refuted some of the concerns from city council members. He said the 250-square-foot rooms are similar in size to the apartments at the River City Studio Homes, 5040 Market St, and the Flats at Market Street, 4903 Market St. – two other adaptive reuse projects in the corridor that Silivanch worked on. Both projects, he said, are between 90% to 96% occupied.

Silivanch added that the hotel's units do include two-burner stoves and that the hotel's cinder block walls limited the owner's ability to combine rooms to create larger apartment units. When asked about the property's future, Silivanch said it would likely be sold by the current owners for use as a hotel.

"I'm just generally disappointed in the fact that there are people in our community that this housing type would serve as a launching place for them to restart their lives," he said about the rezoning denial, "and they've been denied that option now."