OUR VIEW LOGO (NEW)

You’re looking for the hotel at which you’ve made reservations. Maybe you’re traveling alone, on business. Maybe you’re with your family, hoping to investigate the sights and sounds of the Rogue Valley.

What you’re looking for in that moment, as you near your destination, is the way to get to the hotel and, finally, a bed on which to relax.

What you’re not thinking about — and, most often, why should you — is how you’ll eventually leave the hotel once your stay is over.

That subtle difference is the crux behind the concerns raised last week during a meeting of Medford’s Site Plan and Architectural Commission as it discussed plans for a new two-building, four-story, 197-room hotel complex proposed to be developed on land north of Crater Lake Highway and adjacent to Interstate 5.

Developers for what will be called Bullock Hotels told the Medford board that the site will have a single access road leading to — and from — its 212 available parking spaces.

The logistics of that design didn’t sit well with commission member Elle Powell, who wondered not only about easy access to the lot but also what could happen should a hotel filled with guests have to leave quickly in the case of a fire or other emergency.

Such a scenario, she said, “would be an absolute atrocity.”

We second her concerns.

Jay Harland with CSA Planning explained to the commission that the lone, 70-foot driveway at the northeast corner of property was the result of the process of gaining access points from the Oregon Department of Transportation.

Harland said that there would be “a lot of physical ways to get near these buildings and fight fire” because of the site’s positioning near Crater Lake Highway, but he added that a required second or emergency access would be an extremely difficult process that might not be successful.

Developers would “have to go to ODOT hat-in-hand” to get approval, he said.

That might well be the case, but while firefighting crews could conceivably get to the hotel site in event of an emergency, there’s still the matter of employees and guests attempting to get away down that single 70-foot road.

Frankly, we wish we wouldn’t have to take such concerns into consideration. The problem is, it’s still too easy to conjure the images of lines of traffic inching their way down interlocking roads as drivers tried to flee the Almeda Fire.

When considering any project — of any significant size — to be built in the valley, those charged with making these decisions should always have one eye toward safety in a worst-case scenario.

“I’m happy to adopt a final order,” approving the project, Powell said at the meeting, “but to me (a second entrance) would be a requirement. Get it together, ODOT.”

Powell abstained from voting, but in the end the commission moved the project forward after commission member Rick Whitlock made a motion that specifically called for verification that the site’s parking plan complies with local and state fire code recommendations.

That, too, is a concern that we can second. Perhaps the issues raised by Powell might be perceived as being overly cautious, but we think not.

An abundance of caution might be just what is needed to help hotel guests, and the rest of us, get a good night’s sleep.