The owner of the Quality Inn & Suites on Bainbridge Island is hoping to build a new three-story, 20-unit apartment building just south of the existing hotel on Hildebrand Lane.

The hotel property is owned by SHR Holdings and the architect for the new building, Charlie Wenzlau of Wenzlau Architects, met with the city of Bainbridge Island’s Design Review Board last week to talk about the project.

The project is in the early design phase. No applications have yet been filed for the apartment building, which is planned for a 2.36-acre parcel that’s zoned “mixed use-town center.”

In addition to a short subdivision for the property, the project also includes 18 new parking stalls that will be added to the existing 52 stalls on the property.

Preliminary plans call for a part of the parking for the apartment building to be located on the motel parcel, and most of the new stalls would be added to the existing south parking lot, with three stalls located on the Hildebrand Lane right of way. An easement would be created to permanently dedicate the new parking for residential use by the apartment building.

Wenzlau stressed that the project would include the proper amount of parking, no matter how the property was subdivided.

“We’re not borrowing parking from the other lot,” Wenzlau told the Design Review Board, and noted the proposal had the right amount of parking in total.

Whatever parking is provided, he said, has to fit with the rules in place, and a shared-parking proposal wasn’t part of the project.

Wenzlau also said a short plat subdivision was being pursued to give the property owner the flexibility to sell it some time in the future.

The northwest corner of the building would be the focal point for passersby, Wenzlau said.

The appearance of the structure was straightforward, he said.

“It’s a super simple building,” Wenzlau said, with natural cedar elements, perhaps charred; a lot of windows; and landscaping along the southern end to soften the view.

“It’s a contemporary building,” Wenzlau said. “It’s not the traditional Bainbridge style.”

Not much was in the design for the other side of the apartment building — the side facing Highway 305 — but Wenzlau said some acoustically treated windows might be possible.

One focus of the design, he said, was to orientate the apartments toward the green space south of the building.

The property is currently served by one driveway, and the developers plan on adding a second driveway that would be shared by both the hotel and the apartment building.

That idea, however, drew some criticism from the Design Review Board, as well as the plans for parking.

Design Review Board Chairman Alan Grainger said residents coming home to their apartment building would feel like they were arriving somewhere else, given the shared access.

“It feels like you’re coming home to a motel,” Grainger said.

Some on the board also wondered why more parking couldn’t be built on the south end of the parcel, or underneath the building.

Putting the parking under the building was cost-prohibitive, Wenzlau said, and the site is constrained on its southern end by a stormwater detention pond.

Bigger hurdles remain for the project. It cannot proceed to permit review because of the city’s ongoing development moratorium.

Eventually, the proposed commercial subdivision, with site review, would send the short plat on the project to the city’s planning commission for a recommendation.

A site plan review could follow.