Anaheim : Pickwick Hotel Owner Hopes to Save Building

An owner of the 59-year-old Pickwick Hotel says he still hopes to save the downtown building from a wrecker despite a court ruling late last week that the city was authorized to declare the area blighted.

“In my eyes, it’s a beautiful building. The modern trend throughout the city is to replace the historical places,” owner Frank Dusek said of the 225 S. Anaheim Blvd. building, which won a spot on the National Register of Historic Places in the 1970s.

The 4th District Court of Appeal announced Thursday that despite errors by the city’s Redevelopment Agency in an Environmental Impact Report, the agency could declare the area blighted, thus clearing one obstacle blocking demolition of the building. Owners Frank and Herma Dusek had argued the environmental impact report did not take into account the hotel’s historical significance.

Still pending is an appeal by the city of a ruling by Superior Court Judge Jack K. Mandel that the city could not condemn the building without specific plans for development on the site.

Anaheim Development Services Manager John Buchanan said the city now plans between 175,000 and 350,000 square feet of either commercial or retail office space in the place of the hotel, which is across the street from the Anaheim Civic Center. The site is part of the city’s downtown redevelopment project.

Dusek said the hotel, now home to long-term tenants and short-term guests, should be “kept for posterity.” The hotel’s 50 rooms are usually fully occupied, he said.

The Duseks had offered in 1981 to spend $1 million to renovate the hotel, but Mayor Don Roth said Friday that the building was “just impossible to renovate.”

“It needs a lot of help. I like old things, too, because I’m getting old myself, so I’m not into tearing down historical places. But I just don’t think that’s one of the historical monuments in the City of Anaheim,” Roth said.

Dusek, an immigrant from Austria, disagreed and said he was disappointed “because I really do believe in the American dream of exercising free choice and free enterprise.”