SARANAC LAKE – Local restaurateur Paolo Magro can’t build a new hotel on River Street unless the village changes the zoning for the site.

Magro recently submitted plans to the village to build a five-story, 40-room hotel at 151 River St., where his Nonna Fina restaurant is located.

“The applicant is proposing adding four stories of hotel rooms above the ground floor structure in order to take advantage of the views of the mountains and Lake Flower,” reads Magro’s application. “This property will enhance the village of Saranac Lake by adding needed accommodations for people visiting our area.”

The project was initially sent to the village Zoning Board of Appeals because it would require a variance. The maximum height for a commercial hotel building in the village is three stories.

A public hearing on Magro’s variance application was scheduled for this Thursday, but now the hearing has been canceled. Village Community Development Director Jeremy Evans told the Enterprise Monday that the application can’t move forward because the property is located in the B1 zoning district, where hotels are not permitted under the current land use code. Magro has withdrawn his application.

“I just didn’t catch it, but as I was reviewing his area variance application I realized there was another issue with it, so I called him up and we talked about it,” he said. “There’s no point in having a variance hearing or application in front of the zoning board when it’s not a permitted use.”

Magro didn’t return messages the Enterprise left for him Friday and Monday at Little Italy restaurant in Saranac Lake, which he also owns.

He briefly referenced the project last month during a village planning board public comment session on Lake Flower Lodging’s proposed 93-room, four-story hotel on Lake Flower Avenue. He said he bought a motel in Lake Placid, which he didn’t name, six months ago, and now he wants to build a new hotel in Saranac Lake on the Nonna Fina property.

“I’ve got a blueprint,” he said. “My hotel at Nonna Fina is going to be 40 rooms, and also 60 feet tall.”

Plans on file with the village show the hotel toward the front of the property, with a 52-space parking lot and carport behind it. Cars would access the back of the hotel through driveways on each side of the building. The ground floor would have a restaurant, lobby, gift shops, offices and a lakeside patio. The 40 rooms would be spread across the four floors, and all the rooms facing the lake would have balconies.

It’s unclear what Magro will do next. Evans said he’d “leave it to (Magro) to say what he wants to do, but we talked about his options as far as what he’d have to do to have a hotel there, which is basically a zoning change.”

In his public comments last month, Magro asked the village to change the zoning for his hotel project. He said that several years ago he wanted to buy one of the three Lake Flower Avenue motels that Lake Flower Lodging is now under contract to buy.

“My idea was to also put a hotel on the lake, maybe four floors, 40 feet (high),” Magro said. “I approached somebody in the village. Somebody told me not even to think about it. The reason is the zoning (in the B2 district where the motels are located) is only good for two floors. So I walked away from the project to buy the property.”

Now the village is considering rezoning the site of the three motels to a planned unit development district, which means the project won’t have to go through the normal variance process. Magro said he wants the village to do the same for him.

“My point is if the village approves to change the zoning in the area of the lake we’re talking about today, you’ve got to change the zoning on Nonna Fina also,” he said. “Because this, maybe because my English is not good or some people don’t like my face, I call it discrimination.”

A hotel project on the site of Nonna Fina is moot unless the village changes the zoning for the property. It wouldn’t be eligible for a planned unit development district because, at just under one acre, it’s not big enough. The village’s PUDD law says a proposed site for a PUDD has to include a minimum of three contiguous acres of land in the village.

The property where Magro wants to build the hotel is the same site where, in 2007, he received village Planning Board approval for a three-story mixed-use building, over the objections of property owners on Franklin Avenue and Helen Hill. They said it would block their views of Lake Flower and that the proposed building didn’t fit with the historical character of the neighborhood.

However, that building was never constructed. The following summer, Magro instead turned his attention to converting what used to be the former Burger King fast food restaurant into Nonna Fina, which opened in January 2009.