Pasadena : Hotel’s Fate Up for Vote?

A petition seeking to save the historic Huntington Sheraton hotel from demolition has enough valid signatures to put the issue before the city’s voters, City Clerk Pamela Swift said.

Swift said a random sampling of the petition’s 9,276 signatures showed that 76.4%, or 7,087 signatures, were valid. A total of 6,626 valid signatures, or 10% of the city’s registered voters, was required.

The petition seeks to force the Board of Directors either to rescind its November approval of a zoning change needed by the developer to raze the hotel or to place the issue before the voters.

The board has not indicated that it intends to rescind its vote, so the issue will likely be decided in a special election, which would take place in May at the earliest. The board is scheduled discuss the issue at its meeting on Monday.

Developer Lary Mielke has proposed demolishing the 80-year-old hotel’s main building and replacing it with a 380-room replica at a cost of $38 million.

The main structure was closed in October, 1985, after its owners, Keikyu U.S.A. Inc., discovered that the building only had 25% of the structural strength required to withstand a major earthquake.