Hotel Gains Council’s OK to Sell Liquor

In a hard-fought victory for Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, the Los Angeles City Council voted Wednesday to allow the Ma Maison Sofitel Hotel to serve alcoholic beverages but imposed new parking requirements and strict occupancy limits on its restaurants, meeting rooms and banquet facilities.

The unanimous vote ends a yearlong battle over the nearly completed hotel’s request to serve alcohol, which several Westside homeowner groups have tried to use as leverage to force the developer to build a second parking garage. Without the garage, some homeowners have argued, hundreds of cars from the hotel will spill into nearby neighborhoods.

The $50-million luxury hotel--plagued by cost overruns and construction delays--is scheduled to open in October at the corner of Beverly and La Cienega boulevards. It will have 311 rooms and two restaurants, including Patrick Terrail’s reborn Ma Maison Restaurant, which closed on Melrose Avenue in 1985.

Yaroslavsky, facing a rebellion among vocal homeowners opposed to the project, crafted most of the restrictions. In doing so, he won praise from several council colleagues--including some who regularly disagree with him--and moved to defuse a potential campaign issue if he challenges Mayor Tom Bradley in next year’s mayoral race.

Yaroslavsky Criticized

While professing to be a leader of the city’s slow-growth movement, Yaroslavsky has been criticized for doing little to scale back large projects in his district. On the Ma Maison issue, he has emphasized in press releases and in a letter to residents that the restrictions are the most stringent ever imposed by the city.

Yaroslavsky’s compromise left Ma Maison developer Sheldon Gordon with a laundry list of conditions that he says will cost him millions of dollars to meet. It also did little to assuage fears among a core group of homeowners about potential parking shortages.

“I’m numb,” said Gordon, who has estimated that the hotel will lose more than $1 million a year because of the occupancy restrictions. At a hearing two weeks ago, Gordon said the parking and other conditions will cost him an additional $1.5 million a year.

Laura Lake, president of Friends of Westwood, described the compromise as unfair to the community.

“It is a hollow victory” for Yaroslavsky, Lake said. “The reality is that we need a permanent, long-term solution to the parking problems. And this does not do that.”

Traffic Problem

In pushing for his compromise, Yaroslavsky argued that traffic--not parking--is the biggest problem near the hotel, which is across the street from the Beverly Center shopping mall. Reducing occupancy levels, he said, would keep hundreds of potential visitors--and their cars--away from the hotel.

In the end, the council reduced by more than 40% the occupancy of the restaurants and other facilities, allowing 482 fewer visitors than envisioned in the hotel’s building plans. The council also required the developer to squeeze 383 parking spaces into its 328-space garage and to lease 117 off-site parking spaces within 18 months. The occupancy restrictions do not affect the hotel’s guest rooms.

The homeowner groups wanted the developer to build a 257-space parking garage to supplement the 328-space structure. Lake and other homeowner leaders have argued that occupancy restrictions are not effective because they are too difficult to enforce.