The Conroe City Council is again addressing issues with its new $107 million hotel and convention center after learning the city violated its own tree ordinance in the development of the project.
The Hyatt Regency Hotel and Conference Center opened in May and has continued to be plagued with financial issues including unbudgeted operations costs and low occupancy rates.
Now, the city council has realized that the 2-inch diameter trees planted at the site are not big enough. Conroe ordinance requires new trees to be 3 inches in diameter.
After withholding a $600,000 payment to developer Garfield Public Private last month, the council has now agreed to pay the invoice but deferred $100,000 until the tree issue is sorted out.
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“The project is here, it’s on the ground and we have to support it no matter how we got here,” Councilman Howard Wood said. “I love the idea of working together and finding a path forward.”
The tree size was reduced to cut costs for the project, which ballooned from $92 million to $107 million, said Mark Bullard, hospitality leader for Garfield Public Private, which was retained in 2020 to manage the project for the city.
“We do agree it was not per the ordinance,” Mark Bullard, hospitality leader for Garfield Public Private, told the council on July 12. “The caliber size reduction was not brought up during the value engineering process.”
The Hyatt Regency Hotel and Conference Center opened in May and has continued to be plagued with financial issues including unbudgeted operations costs and low occupancy rates.
The tree issue came to light after a resident spoke to the council in June alerting them of dead and dying trees on the property and pointing out the trees were smaller than required by the city’s tree ordinance.
Some of the trees on the property meet the ordinance, Bullard said. Some have grown to two and a half inches and removing them to replace with a three-inch tree “doesn’t make sense.”
Steve Galbreath, head of Garfield’s Design and Construction, said while the trees were too small, 101 new trees were planted on the property which exceeded the 30 percent tree canopy required by the ordinance.
“There was no intention not to meet the ordinance,” Garlbreath said.
Dead trees at the hotel site were pre-existing, and Garfield’s goal was to salvage them to save money and to keep some legacy trees for the project, Bullard said. All but one dead tree have now been removed, he said, and 27 large trees on the property were saved.
“There are two other trees we are monitoring right now,” Bullard said. “Both look like they may be coming back to life. We want to give them a little more time.”
