Gardena Puts Building Moratorium on Hotels

In response to residents’ complaints that Gardena is overrun with motels that attract crime and traffic, the City Council has passed an emergency moratorium temporarily banning new hotel and motel construction.

The moratorium, which was passed Tuesday and took effect Wednesday, does not apply to hotels and motels that are already under construction or were approved by the Planning Commission and the council before Sept. 13, said Assistant City Manager Mitchell Lansdell. Nor does it apply to the planned Eldorado Center hotel, which was exempted from the moratorium because the city is a partner in the project, Lansdell said.

Longtime Gardena resident and community activist Genay Horton said the moratorium is a first step in controlling all types of development.

Adding that developers build hotels “with grand-looking plans, but they can degenerate and very soon become cathouses,” Horton said. “Western Avenue is alive with them. It’s a constant fight to keep them from renting by the hour. Many of them are eyesores and they’re just not a positive element to the community.”

Motel managers said that by reducing competition, the ordinance will slow a trend among less attractive motels to rent to prostitutes rooms that would otherwise go vacant.

Councilman Mas Fukai, who proposed the moratorium, described the ordinance as an effort to halt the spread of crime and prostitution from some hotels and motels along Rosecrans Avenue just outside Gardena city limits, in Los Angeles County. The affected area in both city and county is along Rosecrans between Crenshaw Boulevard and Western Avenue.

Fukai said the area would be easier to control if it were annexed to the city, but proposals to annex the 2-mile-long unincorporated section have been turned down twice by Gardena voters.

City officials have requested increased patrols by the county Sheriff’s Department, which has jurisdiction over the area. Gardena has its own police force.

“We’ve been pleading with the county and the Sheriff’s (Department) to do something about that and it’s been getting better,” Fukai said. “I think I agree with a lot of residents in our city that there are too many hotels. . . . I think there is a fear, and rightly so, of attracting undesirables.”

There are 892 hotel and motel rooms in the city, plus the 100-room China Gate Hotel under construction on Redondo Beach Boulevard, according to Community Development Department records. The figure also includes motel-apartments that rent rooms by the week or month.

The emergency ordinance will be in effect for 45 days, said City Atty. Michael Karger. After a public hearing on the issue, the council can decide whether to extend the moratorium for another 10 months and 15 days, he said.

Lansdell said the city may legally exempt a private project financed partially with public money from a citywide moratorium. The only development in Gardena in that category is the $56-million Eldorado Center, which is adjacent to the Eldorado Card Club. In 1985, the city sold $11.1 million in bonds to pay for the parking structure at the hotel.

The most recent plans for the Eldorado Hotel called for 286 rooms in an 18-story building.

Limiting the number of hotels has long been a priority of some Gardena residents.

In February, the manager of the Gardena Towers and Plaza Apartments and Motel told the council that the intersection of Western Avenue and Redondo Beach Boulevard was “becoming quite saturated with hotels.”

Some hotel managers approved the council’s action.

“I think it’s a good idea,” said Harry Chin, manager of the Dynasty Inn in Gardena. “We only have a 50% to 60% occupancy rate. If new (hotels) are built there will be too much competition. We’ve got enough here.”