Shuttered Santa Ana Hotel Awaits a New Lease on Life

It has been two years since the city closed the 62-year-old Santa Ana Hotel, which by all accounts had become a flophouse from which transients hurled beer bottles at the neighboring First Presbyterian Church.

The last of 58 residents left in January, 1984, and city workers moved in to board the windows and doors. The building was condemned because it needed about $750,000 in structural repairs to meet building codes.

Several failed proposals later, the fate of the Santa Ana Hotel still is unknown, although city officials hope that the latest plan to open it to seniors and low-income residents will work.

“If this doesn’t work, I don’t know what we’ll do with it,” said Roger Kooi, director of the Downtown Redevelopment Commission. Proposals for the hotel have included using it for low-income housing or a youth hostel or simply demolishing it for a parking lot.

Kooi said the hotel, at Main Street and Santa Ana Boulevard, is one of three buildings of concern to city officials as plans to revitalize the downtown area move ahead. The Odd Fellows building and the Masonic Temple remain boarded up because of structural deficiencies as new buildings go up near them.

“To be truthful, they haunt me,” Kooi said. “We’d love to see this project get off the ground.”

The latest proposal, by architect Donald Krotee, would establish a board within the hotel that would check references and screen out transients. Krotee’s plan would provide apartments without kitchens and a daily meal served by the Feedback Foundation, a local social-service agency.

Krotee’s plan hinges on applications for $850,000 in state money and about $900,000 in federal money. The rest of the estimated $2.6-million cost would have to come from private investors, Krotee said. The investments would be tax deductible, he said, because the building is in a historic district.

Competition for the money is “heated,” Krotee said, and a decision is expected by March. Although other developers have failed to raise enough cash to reopen the hotel, Krotee said he remains optimistic. “I think five other developers have put this thing into escrow and all of them have failed,” he said. “I’m going to close this deal.”

Lack of Parking

One of the biggest obstacles is a lack of any parking. Owner Thomas Emerling, who also owns Best Carpet Warehouse, which used to be on the ground floor, said senior citizen housing would be the best use for the building because little parking would be required.

“It’s been a big problem all along,” said Emerling, who bought the hotel five years ago, sold it to Mark Y. Lee and then repossessed it after the city shut it down. “I have high hopes that something can be done this time.”

An earlier proposal to level the hotel for a parking lot pleased church officials, who have only 24 parking spaces, the Rev. Mike Pulsifer said.

He and other church representatives have been sitting in on meetings between Krotee and city officials, Pulsifer said. Although the church might participate in the hotel’s operation, nothing has been established.

‘Less Than Polite’

Church officials mostly want to be sure that the hotel does not become another flophouse. “In the past, residents of the hotel have been less than polite,” Pulsifer said.

The hotel, which has more than 45,000 square feet of floor space, was closed after repeated warnings to then-owner Lee to make the necessary repairs. Of the 58 residents, 34 were assisted in finding housing, according to city records, while six people were charged with misdemeanors for refusing to leave. The charges were later dropped.

Lee was found guilty of contempt in Superior Court and ordered to pay $4,000 in fines. Half of that money was paid to the Feedback Foundation to cover the relocation costs, according to Deputy City Atty. Luis Rodriguez.

Krotee said Santa Ana needs low-income housing. But more than that, he said he wants to retain what he sees not as a rundown, architecturally unspectacular building but an integral part of Santa Ana’s history. “Saving old buildings is fun,” he said.