Violation of Emergency Ordinance : Conversion of Residential Hotel Halted

An eight-unit single-room occupancy hotel in the Gaslamp Quarter is being converted, apparently illegally, into a two-unit apartment house. City officials and others say the construction is occurring without building permits and in violation of an emergency city ordinance that seeks to preserve San Diego’s stock of residential hotels.

In the last week, the city’s Building Inspection Department has ordered a stop to the construction. It is requiring the owner, attorney Charles J. Williams Jr., to present his building plans to the city, and he could face a fine.

Advocates of residential hotel preservation say that, despite the hotel’s relatively small size, Williams should also be held accountable for apparently violating the city’s emergency ordinance that prevents demolition or conversion of single-room occupancy hotels without room-for-room replacement housing.

Interim Measure

The ordinance--in place since late 1985 and due to expire June 30--was drafted as an interim measure pending enactment of a permanent ordinance regulating and promoting residential hotels. It was approved by the City Council in response to growing concern over the loss of so-called single-room occupancy hotels, which offer affordable housing for low-income residents, the elderly and downtown workers.

Since 1976, about 1,524 residential hotel units have been lost to demolition, conversion, redevelopment or fire--including about 277 since the emergency ordinance was enacted--leaving the downtown area with about 3,055 residential hotel rooms.

His possible legal entanglements aside, Williams says he shouldn’t be penalized for taking what was an aging and dilapidated residential hotel--common traits in almost all of the city’s about 60 single-room occupancy hotels--and improving the property by remodeling it into two loft-style apartments.

It is on this broader issue of development versus preservation that Williams has supporters, including the Gaslamp Quarter Council, an organization representing property owners in the 16 1/2-block historic district, and the Downtown Owners and Residents Assn., a group formed to fight the residential hotel preservation ordinance.

“I’ll let it sit before I do anything like” provide a room-for-room replacement for the units lost in his conversion, Williams said in a recent interview. “It’s really tough down here. Lenders look at it as a blighted area, and it’s very difficult to get them to provide money.”

Covered by Ordinance

Gaslamp Quarter Council Executive Director Larry Monserrate says his group opposes the one-for-one replacement requirement because it is viewed as an impediment to redevelopment. “Some of our most blighted and underdeveloped buildings are SROs (single-room occupancy hotels),” said Monserrate, explaining, however, that he doesn’t condone any violations of the current preservation law.

Williams’ problems began last August, when he bought the Stingaree Hotel, 538 5th Ave. The old hotel is among those identified by the city as a residential hotel and covered by the emergency ordinance.

“My place was uninhabited and uninhabitable,” said Williams, adding that the aging hotel had been trashed by transients. A 1985 city report describing the status of residential hotels said that the Stingaree was fully occupied and in need of minor repair.

Using his own money, he said, he began gradually remodeling the building. First he rehabilitated the ground-floor office. Then he started work on the eight rooms upstairs, with the aim of converting them into two loft-style apartments with kitchens. He removed the linoleum floors, knocked out walls and did some painting.

This was work, he maintained, that didn’t need a building permit. “I don’t consider sandblasting and painting . . . as something that needs a building permit,” he said. “I don’t call this a conversion.”

Double-Edged Sword

He said he was aware of the emergency preservation ordinance. “If you want my opinion of the SRO ordinance . . . I think you need to build affordable apartments for people who are regular wage earners, rather than for just transients,” Williams said. “As far as I’m concerned, it’s a double-edged sword. Everyone wants to see property owners make improvements, and then there is this red tape that prohibits conversion.”

The city Building Inspection Department, advised that construction work was under way at the Stingaree, sent out an inspector last week. He found that remodeling work was indeed in progress and that a building permit was needed, according to Charlotte Dwyer, a city code enforcement official familiar with the situation.

Last Friday, the city posted a stop-work order on the property. It is requiring that Williams submit his building plans to the city within 10 working days or restore the building to its former condition.

Williams says he will abide by the city’s admonition and do what is necessary to get a building permit.

But before he can get one, the issue of the emergency preservation ordinance has to be resolved, and that may be very difficult to accomplish.

Catherine Rodman, housing attorney for the Legal Aid Society of San Diego Inc. and chairwoman of the SRO subcommittee of the Regional Task Force on the Homeless, says there either is an ordinance or there isn’t.

Enforcement Problem

“We’re having a problem with enforcement . . . the only way he can get a building permit is through the procedures outlined in the ordinance” that call for one-for-one replacement of converted residential hotel rooms, Rodman said.

Although the number of rooms in the Stingaree was few, Rodman says the number shouldn’t make any difference.

“This particular building is not the issue,” she said. “The issue is that there is a social need that has been identified by the City Council. What he’s done is a violation of an ordinance the City Council (approved) to protect this type of housing.”

Rodman said the city should refuse to allow people to occupy Williams’ building until he has replaced the rooms he has converted. “Are we going to slap his hand and fine him a few bucks or are we going to take this seriously?” she said.

She pointed out that, while developers complain about the interim ordinance, there are several low-interest government loan and tax credit programs available to them for both restoring and building new residential hotels. That would provide someone like Williams an option to conversion, she said.

The agency responsible for monitoring and enforcing the ordinance is the San Diego Housing Commission. Elizabeth Morris, the agency’s acting executive director, said that to her knowledge, “we haven’t had to . . . enforce the ordinance.”

Provision Excluded

The commission is in the midst of preparing an extensive, permanent ordinance regulating residential hotels. The much-delayed regulations--due for another hearing April 20--encompass things like maintenance and safety of the structures, building code changes and clearer definitions of a single-room occupancy hotel.

But, at the direction of the City Council’s Public Services and Safety Committee, the proposed ordinance at this time excludes the controversial one-for-one room replacement provision.

As a result, Morris said, there has been little need for enforcement because residential hotel owners have delayed doing anything with their property until they see the new ordinance’s final form. “Frankly, most of the property owners are waiting to see how this develops . . . to see that there is no permanent replacement requirement,” Morris said.

One of the groups clamoring to exclude the replacement policy is the Downtown Owners and Residents Assn. Its chairman is Dan Pearson, owner of the commercial Horton Grand Hotel and the 32-room Grand Pacific residential hotel, both located downtown. Pearson wants to eventually convert the Grand Pacific into a market-rate, commercial hotel.

Sentiments Echoed

He says that owners of residential hotels should be able to do what they want with their property, governed only by the dictates of supply and demand. Additionally, he says there is no shortage of residential hotels downtown, as people such as Rodman claim.

“The marketplace is taking care of those things (availability of housing) . . . I tell you, they’ll kill the quarter with a permanent (one-for-one replacement) preservation ordinance,” Pearson said.

Echoing similar sentiments was Monserrate, the Gaslamp Quarter Council director. “We don’t want to lock in any use of property,” he said. “While we’d encourage him (Williams) to do it within the legal parameters--the SRO ordinance is in effect right now and those are the rules--to tell an owner he can’t change his use is pretty tough medicine.”

He said his organization has encouraged the restoration of current residential hotels and the use of government financing to build new ones.

There hasn’t been a new residential hotel built in San Diego in more than 70 years. But that will change next week when the 207-room Baltic Inn, a brand-new residential hotel on 6th Avenue, opens.

Also, the restored, 31-room Windsor Hotel on 4th Avenue opens for business today.

The Windsor Hotel was restored by the owners of San Diego Hardware, who used government-assisted financing to do the remodeling, which is part of an overall construction project creating a new 4th Avenue entrance to the venerable hardware store.

“The hotel makes this whole project possible . . . from a financial standpoint, it’s what makes the economics of all this feasible,” said Rip Fleming, an owner of the hardware store.

Low-Interest Loan

The Baltic Inn, built by developers Chris Mortenson, Bud Fisher and Ken Winslow, was financed in part with a $500,000 low-interest loan from the Housing Commission. As part of the loan requirements, 20% of the hotel’s rooms must rent at no more than $200 a month. The remaining rooms will rent for an average of $275 a month.

Morris, of the Housing Commission, said the success of both Windsor and Baltic projects will be under close scrutiny, in part because of the skepticism of other residential hotel owners.