3 Big Victories: Oversized Hotel Voted Down
By Jim
Smith
After nearly two years of
meetings, hearings and general PR and BS, a big hotel project with rooms in
excess of $200 a night has been unable to elbow its way into
Venice.
The Ray Hotel, a project of The Ambrose
Group – which has another hotel in Santa Monica – reached the end of
the road, Sept. 19, when the West L.A. Planning Commission voted 5-0 to reject
the project.
From the beginning the hotel had
exceed the dimensions of the Venice Specific Plan for maximum height and
density. The five-story hotel would have towered 65 feet in places, in spite of
a 30 foot height limit for buildings near the
coast.
The hotel was to be located at
901 Abbot Kinney Blvd., directly across the street from Westminster Elementary
School. It seems that there are no local or state laws against having a building
full of transients overlooking a school.
The project had divided Venetians from
its first presentation at the Land Use and Planning Committee (LUPC) of the
neighborhood council.
This reporter
had never been neutral about the project. According to the minutes of the Dec.
7, 2005 meeting, I urged the committee to send the developer packing since they
were so contemptuous of the Venice Specific Plan. A lot of time and trouble
could have been saved had the LUPC taken my advice. North Beach resident Carmel
Beaumont also spoke against the hotel. Regardless, the LUPC voted 7-0 in favor
of the project.
At a follow-up meeting,
several of the neighbors of the proposed hotel spoke against it, but their
protests fell on deaf ears.
Support or
opposition seemed to fall along class lines. Those who could afford going to the
two plush restaurants at the hotel gushed about the cutting edge design and how
“green” it would be. Those of us who avoid yuppie restaurants
thought more about the traffic it would generate, and the precedent it would set
for more upscale hotels coming into
Venice.
Ambrose went all-out to get
political clout. It retained as its spokesperson, Kristen Montet Lonner, one of
former councilmember Cindy Miscikowski’s aides. For even more influence,
Cerrell Associates, a big-time downtown lobbying firm, also was
retained.
In spite of the support of
some Venice blogs, architects and business organizations, there were more of us
than them. The growing opposition to the hotel influenced councilmember Bill
Rosendahl to take a stand against the
project.
At the West L.A. hearing, the
preponderance of residents in opposition, the flagrant violations of the
specific plan, and last-but-not-least, Rosendahl’s opposition, were
crucial to moving the commission to its unanimous
opposition.
Promises from The Ambrose
Group of a crosswalk and other gifts to Westminster School convinced the
principal, Betty Coleman, to speak in support of the project. The hotel also
pledged to pay a living wage and institute a local hiring program, however, none
of its promises were enforceable.
“Am I the only one here who sees
the irony in a boutique hotel which purports to hire lower-income residents from
the community – when in effect these high-end developments are pushing
these same residents out of the community because they won’t be able to
afford to live there anymore?” testified Gail Rogers, a North Beach
resident and teacher.
Rosendahl
planning deputy, Grieg Asher then urged the commission to either vote the
project “up or down.”
At the end
of the hearing, Joyce Foster, president of the commission invited the Ray Hotel
developers to come back with a plan that did not violate the Venice Specific
Plan. In the meantime, Venice remains the People’s Beach.
Posted: Mon - October 1, 2007 at 08:21 PM