Hotel Proposal Wins in Second Del Mar Vote

For the second time in five months, Del Mar voters went to the polls Tuesday to decide whether to allow a three-story hotel to be built on a crucial downtown block. The measure passed, 1,392 to 1,183, in what observers called a surprisingly easy victory.

Mayor Ronnie Delaney, who had long championed the hotel proposal, was jubilant after receiving 56% of the vote. She said the hotel will provide the financially strapped city with money for a library, parkland, open space and other projects.

“I think this time people realized that something was going to be built on that site regardless,” Delaney said. “They preferred to have a hotel than another shopping center and condo project, which the experts had told us was far more impactful on parking and traffic.”

The developer said that, after gaining Coastal Commission approval, they can break ground on the project within three months and the hotel would open in the summer of 1989.

The pro-hotel side waged a vigorous campaign to collect absentee ballots and to challenge voters to prove their residency.

Several hundred of the city’s 4,500 voters were challenged at the polls, including former Del Mar Mayor Tom Shepard, who opposed the hotel. Shepard refused to vote rather than sign a sworn statement that he lives in Del Mar.

Fewer Rooms in New Plan

After the September election, the pro-hotel side had grumbled that many voters who were not legitimate Del Mar residents had contributed to the narrow defeat of the proposal.

As listed on the ballot, Chateau Del Mar, planned for the northwest corner of 15th Street and Camino Del Mar, will consist of 123 units, 12 time-share condominiums, a 13,000-square-foot park and 4,700 square feet of retail shops.

The new plan contains fewer hotel rooms and time-shares than a plan that was put before voters in a special election and defeated by 15 votes in September. Close elections are a Del Mar tradition--a shopping complex was approved a year ago by 41 votes.

After the defeat in September, developer-landowner Jim Watkins, after initially saying he would never put his family through another grueling Del Mar election, decided to make a second attempt to build an Elizabethan-style hotel.

He argued that the hotel would restore the grace and charm associated with the Hotel Del Mar, which sat on the site for 60 years before being demolished in 1969.

Political and legal squabbles have kept the 5.2-acre lot vacant since then, leading many residents to presume incorrectly that it was somehow zoned for public open space. This made Watkins’ task doubly difficult, in a town where slow-growth, anti-development sentiment already runs high.

Special Election Required

Hotel opponents argued that the hotel would bring too many cars and tourists and block the ocean view from Camino Del Mar. Watkins had offered to pay $1 million for a new library in exchange for the right to build the hotel.

The special election was required under voter-approved Measure B, which requires that all commercial projects along Camino Del Mar of more than 25,000 square feet be submitted to the voters.

Watkins owns the 83-unit Del Mar Inn and the Stratford Square building across from the proposed hotel site. His development company, Del Mar-based Winner’s Circle Resorts, is involved in time-share condo projects in Solana beach, Carlsbad and Oceanside.