Too big.

That was the key takeaway as the Town of Lexington’s Board of Appearance voted down a proposal to bring a downtown hotel to the city’s Main Street, as the members expressed concerns about the sheer mass of the structure developers hope to build.

Despite a day of nasty weather, the town went ahead with the anticipated meeting, where the highest-profile item concerned the proposed Courtyard by Marriott looking to inhabit a vacant lot at 116 E Main St. next to Bodhi Thai.

The board voted not to approve, citing the hotel’s size along with color issues, with the developers seeming determined to continue trying to find a way to make the hotel work.

According to John Hanson, Lexingtons director of planning, building and technology, town staff’s primary concern regarding the project was the dominance that the building would have over the surrounding buildings, where almost all are one story. That concern led to the issue being brought before the Board of Appearance.

The proposed 194-foot-long, 61,000-square-foot building would be four stories tall, though the portion of the building touching Main Street would be one story to match the height of the surrounding buildings. Within the hotel would be 101 rooms.

“We wanted it to be complementary and proportional to the adjacent structures, but we added a little fun element to put in a rooftop terrace over that one story section of building out front to bring people outside and put them up on that roof and keep them a part of the Main Street,” Craig Otto, an architect working with developer Lexington Hospitality, said of the one-story front. “It should create a lot of fun and activity when people are driving up and down the street and are walking up and down the sidewalk.”

The building's size was the main point of contention for the board, with Board Member Wayne Rogers mentioning finding a way for the building not to dominate others around it. Other ideas expressed included color and material changes.

When it comes to the style of the building, Otto claimed that it was purposely designed to be a slightly modern version of a traditional building, leaning more toward traditional than modern.

The one-story portion of the hotel along Main Street would be all gray-and-white brick, while the four-story portion behind would have that same brick pattern on the first story, with story two and up being white stucco, with Otto explaining that breaking up the brick with stucco would ease the cost of construction.

The architect posited that breaking up the colors and materials of the building would also help minimize the visual impression of its size.

Board members asked about the building being physically smaller. Otto was against this.

“If you reduce mass, you reduce the number of rooms,” he said. “Therefore you reduce revenue.”

Raj Champaneri. chief development officer and COO for Lexington Hospitality, said it doesn't make financial sense for them to develop a 30-, 40- or even 50-room boutique hotel.

“Hotels are going to have to have mass and with mass other mass will come. It’s downtown, it’s downtown living that allows cities that are growing in the same way,” Champaneri said. “We’re not developers that have developed interstate hotels, we develop first class hotels, award winning hotels that fit into the community.”

“I believe that once this project is done it will be a win-win situation for everybody in town,” he added.

This is a developing story and will continue to be updated.