State College Planning Commission hears plans for Nittany Residence Club, a proposed condo hotel

The State College Borough Planning Commission heard an update on the latest proposed land development plan for downtown on Wednesday.

James Venture and Jamison Morse of PVE, LLC presented the proposal for a condominium hotel at the intersection of South Atherton Street and West Beaver Avenue. The property is located at 321 West Beaver Avenue, where the BioLife Plasma Services building currently sits (BioLife previously announced it would close this spring and Venture said the company’s lease expires at the end of the year).

Updated plans, originally submitted in January, show the building would still be formed in an “L” shape, with frontage along South Atherton Street and West Beaver Avenue. It would be renamed the Nittany Residence Club, according to the presentation given Wednesday.

The ground floor would be mixed use, meaning there would be a hotel lobby and a commercial/retail space. A change that was made to the plans includes moving back the corner of the retail space and instead provide outdoor seating for the first floor retail/commercial planned, Venture said.

The second through ninth floors would have the same general layout, Venture said, with condominium hotel rooms that would vary from one, two and three bedroom units.

It’s currently expected to have 66 total units, he said. Through the process they’ve learned that a lot of people are more interested in the one bedroom units, so they added more of those units to the plans. The presentation showed 24 one bedroom units, 30 two-bedroom units and 12 three-bedroom units, though Venture said that could change slightly.

“It seems a lot of people intend to purchase these and say, ‘I’m not going to use it a whole lot, I’m still going to use it a little bit, but I’d like to use it primarily as an investment property,’” Venture said.

The rooftop would be for owners and hotel guests, and plans include a lot of green roof elements for stormwater management, he said.

The interior would be maintained as “luxury high end,” Venture said. The bottom exterior would have a white, gray brick stone look and everything else would have panels. The architectural elements would aim to bring in a more historic look, Venture said.

“We intend to spend a lot of money on the exterior facade to make the … exterior of the building look just as nice as the interior of the building,” he said.

The building would be operated as a hotel but the individual rooms would be purchased as condominiums. All hotel suites would be rented as a one-bedroom luxury condo, the presentation states. The hotel operations would be managed by an on-site hotel management company hired by the association.

It would have 68 parking spaces, as required by the borough, and a traffic impact study isn’t required.

The anticipated timeline for the project, as stated in the presentation, is to obtain the design and permits this year, have an 18-month construction period between January 2025 and June 2026, and to be fully operational by fall 2026.

Anita Genger, a planning commission member, asked about the condo agreement — which states units are not to be occupied full-time by the owner — and if a student could own a unit and live there nine months of the year.

Venture said full-time students cannot live there; he’s already had parents ask if they can buy a unit and have their kids stay there during the semester and he’s told them no.

“We’ve looked at other documents that you guys have in State College and obviously got advice from our legal consults on how to draft that provision so that this doesn’t become any sort of a student housing,” Venture said. “...I think we’ve got to watch, I guess, compliance and from a legal standpoint how you can say they can’t be there, but, you know, it’ll be a private restrictive covenant that will be enforced by the association, too.”

Plus, he added, when people enter the hotel, everyone will have to go through the front desk — even the unit owners — to get a key card. It won’t be operated like an apartment where the owner has a key, so Venture said they’ll monitor who occupies the units.

Genger said they’ve had issues with older condominium units where the condo association stopped enforcing that rule. Venture said they intend to work with the borough while drafting the documents.

“I think ours is a little bit different in the sense that the way it’s going to be owned and occupied. There’s a motivation of the owner to make sure it’s maintained in that condition so any students attempting to live here would be vetted out by the association relatively quickly,” Venture said.

Planning Commission member Ron Madrid asked who oversees the development from an occupancy standpoint, to which Ed LeClear, the borough’s planning and community development director, said the Centre Region Code would be in charge of that.