Lake County Gazette

At the Nov. 14 meeting of the Village of Gurnee Board, the mayor and the board discussed an ordinance for licensing hotels in the area. 

Village attorney Bryan Winter gave some background on the discussion, citing a recent trend in neighboring communities requiring separate licenses for hotels due to increased criminal activity in public spaces. 

Winter then talked through the four different sections of the proposed license that would codify requirements for hotels in the area. The four areas would address: building and safety measures, registration regulations, occupancy regulations, and duties for hotel authority personnel regarding potential for incidents.

He also noted that the village has a fairly high ratio of hotels, 12 of them, due to the village being a regional tourist location. Earlier this year the village created a separate license for tobacco businesses. 

"By way of background, I do want to point out that the industry itself really already has established industry standards because of the nature of this business, because a lot of them, a lot of the hotels are members of a franchise or have flag relationships with bigger oversight," Winter said. "This is an area where there are already standards regarding registration and some safety measures. We're going to talk about that tonight. But I actually would propose to the trustees that there really already is a baseline. And what I will tell you is that the hotels are already aware of certain safety measures."

Some of the board trustees asked questions about how these policies would impact long-term hotels, which will be held accountable to a slightly different version of the ordinance, and how the availability of registration to the city would affect confidentiality, which would be maintained as the city police are held to confidentiality standards with that information. The board did not yet vote on the ordinance, but approved this first read.