Council Backs Planning Commission Decision : Hotel Development in W. Hollywood OKd

The West Hollywood City Council voted unanimously this week to uphold a controversial decision by the city Planning Commission allowing construction of a 179-room motel, apartment and retail development on Santa Monica Boulevard.

The Planning Commission’s decision favoring the project had been appealed to the council last month by residents who feared the development’s impact on traffic and parking congestion. The $20-million project will replace the 75-room Tropicana motel at Santa Monica Boulevard and Westmount Drive.

But council members granted a major concession to residents Monday night by agreeing to erect a temporary cul-de-sac on Westmount Drive. Neighbors had contended that a barrier was necessary on the narrow residential street to prevent an increase in traffic caused by motel guests, employees and visiting suppliers.

Temporary Barrier Approved

Council members agreed to the temporary barrier to see whether it would work on a permanent basis, Mayor Stephen Schulte said Tuesday.

“We’ve thought all along that this was a project that fit our needs,” he said. “At the same time, we heard loud and clear that people in the neighborhood feared more traffic. This is a way, we hope, to see how much traffic we can cut down on.”

The council also agreed to look into cutting a U-turn lane through the Santa Monica Boulevard median strip to allow eastbound traffic near the motel to turn around instead of driving through nearby residential streets. And the council also plans to ask the state Department of Transportation to conduct a traffic study of the congested intersection of Santa Monica and La Cienega boulevards.

Walter Schlosser, president of the West Knoll Triangle Assn., the neighborhood group that earlier opposed the motel, had asked the council Monday night for a permanent cul-de-sac on Westmount and for a traffic study.

In testimony before the council, Schlosser also requested several other concessions that the council did not act on, including limits on the kinds of retail businesses that would be allowed to conduct business in the motel development and free on-site parking for all patrons.

“These basic issues have been ignored by the Planning Commission and sidestepped by the developers,” he said.

Arlen Andelson, an attorney who represents the motel’s developer, Yehuda Naftali, said Naftali and the motel’s architect, David Oved, had gone out of their way to satisfy the city’s zoning requirements and the neighbors’ concerns.

‘We Exceed Them’

“We don’t just meet the code requirements; we exceed them in many ways,” Andelson said.

William Fulton, temporary chairman of the commission, said the new additions agreed on by the council “answer most of the neighbors’ major concerns.”

“We in the Planning Commission never considered the possibility of erecting a temporary cul-de-sac,” Fulton added. “I think it’s a good idea.”

In its September decision to approve the motel project, the commission had imposed a series of other conditions, including a $180,110 traffic mitigation fee, a levy of $67,699 for the city’s open space and park fund and an identical figure for a parking and transit fund.

The motel project, which was proposed more than three years ago and then delayed by the city’s incorporation and subsequent efforts to develop a temporary zoning law, is the first major new development overseen by the Planning Commission and the City Council.

“This was an important project because it really revealed the strengths and weaknesses of our interim zoning ordinance,” Fulton said. “It fit inside the ordinance’s height and scale limits, but the neighbors had some very legitimate concerns about its impact. The things we’re learning now will help us fine-tune the (city’s) General Plan,” which is being revamped.