The owners of Toftrees Golf Resort have requested two zoning regulation changes to accommodate a planned major redevelopment that would significantly upgrade the 50-year-old property in Patton Township.
Bob Poole, managing member of resort owner State College Friends, told the Patton Township Board of Supervisors on Wednesday that “the plan here is to do a really high-end resort,” that would be part of Marriott’s Autograph Collection of independently-operated luxury hotels.
Township supervisors in August heard an overview of the estimated $50 million project and unanimously approved sponsoring two state grant applications related to the site redevelopment and improvements to the Toftrees Avenue corridor.
On Wednesday, the board agreed to refer a pair of zoning change requests for the project to the planning commission for review and recommendation.
State College Friends is seeking an increase in the maximum building height from 50 feet to 75 feet for the resort property only and an increase in the number of permitted residential units within the Toftrees Planned Community to allow for the construction of 50 homes within the 140,000-square-foot resort.
“At a typical resort, it’s a lot more beneficial if the footprint of the building can be minimized by going up versus going out,” Poole said of the height increase. “There’s a few reasons for that.”
Plans call for 154 hotel rooms, an increase over the current 102, a conference center and expanded meeting space, along with a 4,000-square-foot luxury spa, restaurant, private dining room and new clubhouse for the golf course.
An increased building height, Poole said, would allow for better stormwater management and more green space that is important to drawing events to the resort. The plans have large wedding, social and event lawns.
Expanding upward instead of outward also will make it more efficient for guests and staff to get where they want to go quickly, he added.
Because of the grading of the site, the highest point of the building would only be noticeable from the golf course and lawns at the rear of the property, Poole said.
The 50 homes, meanwhile, would be constructed separately from the hotel but within the resort property. The resort does not currently have residential units, but Poole said they are planned to help reduce the overall cost of the redevelopment.
“As you know, right now construction costs, you can see what’s happening in the country right now. It’s really crazy,” Poole said. “The cost of material and labor has just grown significantly. The other thing that’s happened is, and I think people are seeing it in mortgages, where you were getting a mortgage for 3% or under it’s now 6.5… It’s no different in commercial projects where we don’t put all cash up; we borrow and that debt coverage has now increased dramatically. The additional 50 units will allow us to reduce some of that.”
Residents of the homes would use resort services and amenities, Poole said. He added that, from what he has observed in the current market, he believes the buyers would likely purchase them as second homes, although they could be used as permanent residences.
The number of residential units in the overall Toftrees Planned Community — which contains a number of housing developments — is capped at 4,690. State College Friends requested the addition of 50 units because the land in the Toftrees area surrounding the resort is separately owned by three different ownership groups, none of whom are willing to give units toward a development in which they don’t have an interest.
Planning commission is expected to review the zoning requests during its meeting at 4:30 p.m. on Monday.
“If we can make this happen, I think this resort will be not only a huge benefit to the township and region, I think people will come from all over the country,” Poole said. “Because a lot of people come back now because of corporations, there’s a lot of Penn Staters out there, we have a lot of events that are happening and it’s a great place to come. We really, in this town, do not have that high-end resort, and Toftrees, to be fair, is older. It’s been there a long time.”
