DeeTour hotel approved

Though dozens of conditions still loom for Apollo Land Holding LLC, a real estate development company owned by Taylor, land use approval kicked in this week with the county’s action.

Hotel approval marks the second time the development company submitted plans related to DeeTour.

In late 2013, Taylor filed designs for the original DeeTour concert venue (with no hotel yet indicated). Amid polarized public comments, Taylor downsized the plan and re-submitted it to county planners, who approved it in 2014.

At the tail end of 2015, Taylor submitted plans for a hotel addition to the previously approved concert venue — that plan found success this week.

Taylor said he’s reviewing the county’s decision, but he wasn’t ready by press time to comment on the hotel project, or specifics in the building schedule.

According to plans Taylor submitted, a 50-room hotel would go up at the former mill site, designed mainly for concert-goers at DeeTour — an amphitheater and stage aimed for construction near the intersection of Lost Lake Road and Dee Highway (Highway 281).

The developer plans to put in a 437-car parking lot to serve the proposed hotel and concert venue, the same number that surfaced in the original DeeTour plan, sans-hotel.

Like the original plan, Taylor’s new design with a hotel drew concerned comments from several neighbors and local groups over traffic impacts, noise and storm water impacts.

“This hotel addition is essentially modifying (the proposal) into a much larger development with more significant impacts,” Scott Franke of Hood River Valley Residents Committee wrote.

The County gave the developer 34 conditions along with approval, including water access, environmental and floodplain mitigation, and getting building and road/traffic permits.

Parking rules specified the developer must not exceed the proposed 437 spaces, and Lost Lake Road will be off limits for parking. A minimum of one biking space must be provided for every 10 car spots.

Taylor hopes the project will be a nod to the history of Dee, a tiny lumber community about 12 miles south of Hood River, where the historic “Company Hotel” once stood. He told the News several months ago he has a personal connection to the Dee area, where his grandfather served as the mill’s bookkeeper during the early 20th century.

In the 1900s, the hotel sprung up along with the lumber mill, which was established around 1906. The Dee area’s wood processing history spanned roughly nine decades, until the hardboard plant burned down in 1996, according to Hood River News archives.

Before Dee was even known by that name, the hotel was planned.

A Dec. 7, 1905 article of the Hood River Glacier newspaper called the lumber operation “Oregon Lumber Co.’s Mammoth New Mill,” and described the hotel as a component of the project.

“It is the intention of the company to build a large boarding house and hotel at the newly named town of Dee, which will contain 100 rooms,” the Glacier story reads.

“When the lumber company becomes well established, a new town will have sprung up as if by magic.”