LOCAL

Proposed Middletown hotel that would lead to demolition of Rusty's moves closer to reality

Zane Wolfang
Newport Daily News

MIDDLETOWN – A long-delayed proposal to knock down Rusty’s Bar and Grille on Wave Avenue and replace it with a 23-room extended-stay hotel took a step forward Tuesday night after the Zoning Board of Review unanimously approved a special-use permit for the project. 

The permit is needed because of the property’s zoning in a limited business district and its proximity to Easton Pond in Zone 1 of the town's Watershed Protection District. The board also unanimously approved the project’s development plan review.

The Zoning Board first voted 4-1 against remanding the proposal back to the Planning Board, dismissing attorney James Callaghan’s line of argument on behalf of abutting residential property owners the Planning Board’s advisory opinion in favor of approving the special-use permit, issued on Jan. 11, 2019, is now outdated.

Rusty's bar on Wave Avenue in Middletown

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Then, after hearing from applicant Atlantic Beach Suites II LLC attorney David Martland and five project consultants accepted by the board as experts on their respective fields of architecture, engineering, traffic, real estate and town planning (all of whom Callaghan was given the opportunity to cross-examine), the Zoning Board voted to approve the special use permit request under the following conditions:

  • The project must incorporate all conditions set forth by the Planning Board and the Middletown Conservation Commission in their advisory opinions issued in Jan. 2019.
  • The petitioner must provide a report from a licensed hydrologist or related soil scientist including data on the rate and direction of groundwater movement under the site, and if it is found to migrate towards Easton Pond, incorporate mitigation measures to “substantially alleviate any potential sources of pollution.”

Atlantic Beach Suites II and the combined lots at 42-44 and 56 Wave Avenue, which currently includes Rusty’s Bar and Grille as well as three single-family cottages, are owned by commercial developers Harry and Peter Kyriakides, who also own the Atlantic Beach Hotel and Suites and Tickets Bar and Grille in the same neighborhood.

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The brothers purchased the lots in 2003 for $1.2 million, and they first submitted this hotel proposal back in 2018.

The Zoning Board of Review received advisory opinions from the Planning Board and the Conservation Commission in January 2019 in favor of approving the special permit.

This rendering shows the proposed four-story hotel on Wave Avenue in Middletown.

After that, however, the proposal lingered on the Zoning Board’s docket for nearly three years, due in part to the decision of several abutters to hire legal counsel to aid in their opposition to the proposal; in part to the difficulty of coordinating the schedules of the board, the lawyers and the expert witnesses on both sides; and in part to the unexpected and prolonged effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, including the need to re-advertise the proposal to abutters after such long delays.

“I think it is uncontroverted that we meet the required special-use permit elements from a civil engineering perspective, a traffic perspective, an architecture perspective, a land use perspective, and from a planner’s perspective," Martland said in his closing remarks to the board on Tuesday. "I think all of those elements have been met, and we’re not requesting any variance relief with respect to this project.”

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No members of the public spoke in opposition to the proposal, a contrast to the first iteration of this special meeting in March 2019, when the board heard several hours of testimony for and against the project. The abutters represented by Callaghan have 30 days to appeal the board's decision, according to Article 3 of Middletown’s Zoning Code. 

If any appeal is filed, the code says “the Zoning Board of Review shall hear and decide appeals within 65 days of the date of the filing of the appeal … and shall give public notice, at least 14 days prior to the date of the hearing in a newspaper of general circulation in the town.”