Hotel Planners Pleased By Impact Report
A proposed luxury hotel for the site of the private Sand and Sea Club on Santa Monica beach would create air-quality problems during construction and add to traffic congestion on Pacific Coast Highway, according to a draft environmental impact report released recently for public comment.
But the developers don’t expect either problem to create a major roadblock for the 160-room hotel and community center proposed by restaurateur Michael McCarty, managing general partner of the Santa Monica Beach Development Partnership.
“I’m very happy with it,” McCarty said of the report. “This is great. You always hope you get something like this.”
Public comments on the two-volume, 770-page report--which is available for review at the main branch library and at City Hall and for purchase at the Santa Monica Planning Department--will be accepted by the Planning Department until Feb. 6. A final report, including responses to the public comments, is scheduled for release in late February or early March, according to Liz Casey, associate city planner.
The project is expected to go before the Planning Commission in late March and then before the City Council in April.
The project must also receive approval from the state Coastal Commission before construction can begin.
Even if the developers obtain all the approvals, however, the project could be blocked by an initiative that will go before Santa Monica voters in November. If adopted by voters, the measure, designed to restrict hotel construction near the coast, would block McCarty’s hotel unless construction is already in progress. A competing initiative that would exempt the project is also on the same city ballot.
McCarty’s proposal was selected by the city from among 11 received in 1987 in response to a call for proposals to develop the 4.9-acre parcel of beach property, which is owned by the state and managed by the city. The state and the city wanted a project that would generate at least $500,000 annually in revenues and increase public access to the site.
The Sand and Sea Club has leased the site since the early 1960s and had been paying the city about $125,000 a year until recently, when the amount was doubled.
McCarty’s proposal guaranteed a minimum of $1 million a year in rent to the city and as much as $1.9 million in taxes--a total of about $2.9 million per year after completion in 1993. The proposed hotel would have 160 rooms in a central building and a cluster of bungalows, each with a fireplace and private balcony or patio. There would also be two 200-seat restaurants, a 5,646-square-foot conference center with six meeting rooms, a 8,555-square-foot banquet room and a 2,151-square-foot multipurpose room, which, for example, could be used by the Westside Arts Center for musical or theatrical performances.
The project would include a community center complex, including public changing rooms and showers, a children’s park, and an arts and environmental center. The three-story community center would incorporate the two-story Marion Davies North House, which has been designated as a historical landmark. It would be the only existing structure on the site that would be saved and would become part of the second and third floors of the community center.
Two levels of subterranean parking would provide 527 spaces for hotel and public use.
The project would generate 2,495 total vehicle trips per day on weekdays, and 2,240 trips per day on summer weekends, numbers large enough to significantly aggravate congestion during peak hours, according to the report. The worst traffic effects would occur on the coast highway and on the California Incline leading up the Palisades Park bluffs, the report states.
The report recommends installing a traffic signal on PCH at the entrance to the project as a way to lessen the impact.
The report also recommends that the hotel building nearest to the coast highway be built so that it steps backs as the building height increases and that the main hotel building be broken up into three or four structures similar to the cluster of bungalows proposed along the beachfront of the project.
McCarty said both recommendations are acceptable.
BACKGROUND
Restaurateur Michael McCarty’s plan was selected from among 11 received in 1987 in response to a call for proposals to develop a 4.9-acre parcel of beach property that is owned by the state and managed by the city. The proposal calls for a hotel complex with 160 rooms, two 200-seat restaurants, a 5,646-square-foot conference center, a 8,555-square-foot banquet room and a 2,151-square-foot multipurpose room. The project would include a community center complex, a children’s park, and an arts and environmental center.
