The board of trustees listened Monday night to concerns about a special permit application that would allow the Landmark Inn to become a hotel.

The Inn, at 64 Chestnut Street, is currently a nine-room B&B. If the application is approved, the inn would no longer have to be owner occupied like other tourist accommodations. The application also requests permission to increase the size of the operation by two rooms.

Almost all the residents speaking during the required public hearing acknowledged the inn's setting on a two-acre parcel as being conducive to granting hotel status. But at the same time, they expressed concerns about the impact of allowing the change.

Chestnut Street resident Patty Ashley said the Landers had done a wonderful job with the inn, but that the intersection of Glen and Chestnut was already a "quagmire of traffic."

"I hate to see anything that adds to that traffic," she said.

Former trustee Stephen Mahlum spoke about lifting the requirement for owner-occupancy.

A manager, he said, may not do as good a job of protecting the residential status of the neighborhood. Mahlum said he is against businesses in residential areas that are not owner-occupied and managed.

Issuing the permit, he said, may not be in the best interest of the community and neighborhood.

Main Street businessman Vin Russo said it was not so much a matter of what would happen with this particular property, but a matter of what may come as a result of the change in status.

"It would open the door to every home in Cooperstown declaring itself a hotel," Russo said. "You would be opening up Pandora's Box."

Russo said he was surprised to find out a hotel was an allowable use in a residential zone and perhaps it was time to revisit the zoning on Chestnut Street.

Pete Landers, one of the inn's owners, addressed the board also and asked trustees to take into consideration the uniqueness of the property. He compared the Landmark to both the Inn at Cooperstown and the Cooper Inn.

He also said that to imply an on-site manager would not be responsible was "ridiculous."

Landerws said prior to his and his parents' ownership, the property was financially a "loser" and that the owner couldn't make it work.

His parents, he said, had a vision of bringing the residence back to its former stature.

"This will enable us to move to the next level," he said.

Following the public coments, trustee Stuart Taugher said he had visited the inn recently and believed the trustees would be "amazed" at how nice it is.

"If you allow a hotel permit anywhere, this should be it," he said. "The only thing I would suggest is that it cannot become a restaurant or bar situation. I think it is the best seting in the village for this use."

Mayor Carol Waller said he asked the village attorney John Lambert if it would be possible to put restrictions on a special use permit, but he did not have an immediate answer.

Waller said she did not want to vote on the permit application Monday because there was a question of whether neighboring property owners were properly notified of the public hearing.

"I don't want to vote tonight and have it be wrong or challenged," she said.

The procedural error - like those that seemed to plague the village board's efforts to amend the zoning law earlier this year and kept the trustees from voting Monday night, will be corrected next month when the neighbors are notified according to the law and another hearing is conducted.