Another hotel proposal has surfaced in Whitefish, this time a 76-room Hampton Inn & Suites planned off U.S. 93 South behind the defunct Wendy’s restaurant.

Larry Lambert of Lambert Hotels in Missoula is asking the city of Whitefish for a commercial planned unit development on a portion of the property. The proposal also needs a conditional-use permit to move forward.

The Whitefish Planning Board will hold a public hearing at 6 p.m. Thursday at Whitefish City Hall to consider the project.

Lambert proposes to build the hotel — estimated to cost just under $8 million — on the wider portion of a 5.7-acre tract about 300 feet away from the highway to soften effects of the building and parking lot, and to allow for a landscaped entrance to the hotel. The Wendy’s building will be torn down.

Lambert wants to build the hotel to a height of 45 feet, which will require a variance to the 35-foot maximum building height allowed in city zoning regulations for the WB-2 zone. Architectural drawings show the majority of the roof at 31 feet, but Lambert is asking for flexibility in the design.

“The applicant is requesting the building height deviation in order to avoid a plain flat roof,” the planning staff report said. “By adding articulation to the top of the roof, it reduces its overall massiveness of the building, which is an important element in architectural review.”

Lambert said his design team initially designed the hotel as a flat three-story building.

“It looked like a prison or like a dormitory,” he said. “Everybody agreed it looked terrible; that’s why we changed it. The Architectural Review Committee said break up the roof line. We turned it into an L shape with lots of bump-outs and character added to the building.”

Lambert, who has spent his entire professional career in the hotel business, said his design team melded elements from throughout the Whitefish community into the Hampton design. Slanted rooflines on portions of the building, for example, are reminiscent of the new Sportsman & Ski Haus roofline at Mountain Mall.

Amenities at the hotel will include a virtual golf room with a golf simulator for guests, an outside breakfast area to the north so guests have a view of the mountains, a pool, workout room and conference room.

The city’s Architectural Review Committee has met with Lambert twice in a pre-application format to ensure the building fits into the neighborhood. A building with a footprint greater than 15,000 square feet must meet additional standards to mitigate the effects of a very large building. The footprint of the proposed hotel is 20,030 square feet.

Lambert said one of the reasons he and his business partner Rod Morse looked at Whitefish for a new hotel is because Morse, who owns the Days Inn in Billings, plans to move to Whitefish because he has family there.

The Flathead Valley has “come back really strong in the hotel market,” Lambert said. “They’re doing very well and from a long-term outlook it’s pretty darn good up there ... we did a market analysis and found that a Hampton Inn and Suites is the right brand in that market.”

Lambert said he considered a downtown location but didn’t find it feasible.

“We’ve gone through the architectural review and we’ve added hundreds of thousands of dollars to the project after going through the preliminary review,” he said. “Whitefish is particular about what they want and that’s fine. That’s one reason why we’re going there.”

Two unrelated proposals for smaller, boutique hotels have surfaced in recent months for downtown Whitefish, but neither plan has materialized. A year ago Brian Averill, one of the owners of The Lodge at Whitefish Lake, wrote to the city of Whitefish expressing interest in developing a small hotel at the corner of Central Avenue and Third Street.

A couple of months after Averill’s query, developer Orlan Sorenson proposed an 80-room boutique hotel at the corner of Spokane Avenue and East Second Street on the Block 46 site, but that plan was scrapped when his investors couldn’t secure financing to buy the property.

Lambert brings a wealth of experience in the hotel business to his proposed Whitefish project. He said his grandparents and parents were in the hotel business, so he was “born into the business.” He began taking hotel management classes in high school. He formed Lambert Hotels in 2003 and has built two other Hampton Inns, one in Great Falls and the other in Nampa, Idaho. He also has been involved in numerous hotel projects throughout Montana.

Lambert spent 11 years in management at Ruby’s Inn in Missoula; nine of those years he was the general manager.

The Whitefish Planning Office is recommending approval of the planned unit development and conditional-use permit. The Planning Board will forward its recommendation to the Whitefish City Council, which will have the final decision.

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by email at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com.