Plans by the developers of Buoy Beer Co. and the Adrift Hotel to turn a former anchovy processing plant into a 40-room hotel over the Columbia River received approval Tuesday night from the Astoria Planning Commission.

Work on the hotel, which will be located at the base of Ninth Street next door to Buoy Beer, could begin as early as April, said Tiffany Turner, the CEO of Adrift Hotels Social Purpose Corp. in Long Beach, Washington.

Parking was the only sticking point for several planning commissioners, but they concluded that parking availability in and around downtown is a larger problem that should be tackled outside of one project. The Astoria Downtown Historic District Association is still working to complete a downtown parking study.

Surrounding businesses and property owners are also worried about the impact on parking, but support the hotel project — Buoy Beer has been a good neighbor, one adjoining property owner said.

The area, which includes a mix of two-hour limit and no-limit parking spots, is already heavily used by people who work downtown, as well as by visitors. A new dialysis center is under construction between Sixth Street and Seventh Street near Buoy Beer, building over what was once a large public parking lot.

In their conditional use application, the hotel developers proposed a solution: valet parking. This would allow them to tightly pack up to 30 cars in a parking lot across from the hotel. The lot had previously been used by processing plant employees.

The intention is not to gouge guests with valet parking costs, Turner said. Instead, the valet parking option “was a very creative solution to what we knew was a big problem.”

The hotel will likely charge a small parking fee for the service. Developers are still examining other options, including purchasing a lot farther away, but they hoped that including valet parking would be enough to get the project approved by the Planning Commission.

Commission President Sean Fitzpatrick said this kind of valet parking is untested in Astoria.

“I’m not saying we shouldn’t allow it or shouldn’t consider it,” he said. “I’m saying we don’t know how it would work.”

But newly appointed Commissioner Patrick Corcoran said this kind of parking is an approach that, depending on how it works out, may become a model to address parking problems elsewhere in the city.

Other details about the hotel have not been publicly released. Even the name has not been decided on yet, Turner said.

Developers describe the hotel as “boutique, with luxury amenities.” Renovating the processing plant to create a hotel will not increase the footprint of the original building, nor its height. Since the building is not historic, renovation details will be handled directly by city staff and will not undergo a public design review.

The hotel falls under the Urban Core, the final piece of the city’s Riverfront Vision Plan, which guides development along the river. But the Planning Commission is in the middle of developing codes and guidelines for the area. The hotel project was evaluated under existing codes.

As a condition of approval, developers will need to improve the section of the Astoria Riverwalk that runs in front of the building. Processing plant operations and frequent forklift traffic resulted in extreme wear and tear along the popular riverfront trail.

Word of the hotel project first broke publicly last October, around the same time the city was considering another hotel proposal — a new four-story Marriott-brand hotel by developer Hollander Hospitality at the base of Second Street. That project, the Fairfield Inn and Suites, went through several redesigns, multiple hearings, multiple denials and multiple appeals before it was approved in December by the City Council in a 3-2 vote.

The Fairfield project became a campaign issue in city elections and a source of controversy in the community. A crowd usually turned up at every meeting to speak against the project.

The hotel proposed by the Adrift and Buoy developers met with a very different reaction. Initial news of their plans drew praise from residents, who pointed to the track record of the people involved to improve old buildings, involve the community and provide well-paying jobs.

At the Planning Commission hearing Tuesday, despite concerns about parking, no one spoke against the project.