Hermosa Beach to Get a Hotel After All : Growth: A Brentwood businessman finds a way around the long dispute over the vacant Biltmore Hotel site. He plans to develop a block just south of it.

For a quarter century, it has been the longest-running debate in Hermosa Beach: To have or not to have a beachfront hotel--that, to put it mildly, has been the question.

Neither public hearings nor referendums nor City Council votes have settled the community’s ambivalence about what to do with the old Biltmore Hotel site on The Strand. The only certainty, in fact, has been about what the citizens don’t want on the publicly-owned lot. Five times over the years, in court and on the ballot, they have blocked plans to erect a new hotel.

But now comes Brentwood developer David Greenwood, who, it appears, will give the South Bay’s littlest beach city a seaside hotel whether it wants one or not.

Greenwood and his partners have acquired the property just south of the old and vacant Biltmore site and have notified the businesses there that by year’s end, they plan to begin replacing them with a $35-million luxury hotel.

The decision, which requires no public review because the hotel will be legally built to code on private commercial property, means that this summer will mark the end of an era for a handful of small seaside businesses, including the well-known La Playita Mexican restaurant.

“The whole thing just stinks,” said Sue Cohen, who, with her husband, Harold, bought La Playita 10 years ago.

“This is a small town, and it’s already too dense. I don’t think a large hotel on the beach is appropriate for Hermosa Beach. This town has a kind of quaint atmosphere, a kick-back atmosphere, and a hotel would completely change it.”

But Greenwood disagreed.

“Hermosa Beach is a unique and wonderful site that ought to have a unique and wonderful place on The Strand,” he said. “I think the hotel will be much appreciated once it’s there.”

The history of the project is a tortuous one that began with the razing in the 1960s of the Biltmore Hotel at 14th Street and The Strand. Once grand, the establishment by the time of its demolition had deteriorated into a low-rent residential hotel that many in the community regarded as an eyesore and a magnet for riffraff.

The site was taken over by the city, but from that point on, indecision reigned. From 17-story skyscrapers to public parks, every idea put forward for the site was rejected by the city’s voters.

Particularly problematic was City Hall’s specific plan for the site, which involved linking the city’s 0.85-acre lot with the private property next door to make way for a 260-room hotel. Proponents talked about revitalizing the city’s downtown; critics warned of runaway development.

Meanwhile, the sand-covered lot languished in litter, a curious gap in the otherwise uninterrupted parade of summer cottages and beachfront development. And so it remains. Even the local growth opponents shake their heads at the waste.

“It’s the world’s biggest cat box,” one recently sighed.

As the squabbling continued last month, Greenwood and his partners quietly completed their acquisition of the property next door to the site and went ahead with a scaled-down version of the embattled hotel. Staffers at the California Coastal Commission, which approved the project Thursday, described Greenwood’s hotel as a four-story, 172-room “Holiday Inn-style” project, surrounded by palm trees and draped with greenery.

Scheduled for completion in 1992, the project will take up the 1300 block of The Strand, where Pacific Strand Roller Skates, Jeffer’s Beach Rentals and Goodies Galore now stand along with the Cohens’ patio restaurant. Also on the block are several abandoned brick buildings, including the defunct Strand Bathhouse.

The merchants said they have been notified that after this summer they will have to move, an announcement that has left not only them, but their regular customers dismayed.

“They hoodwinked us,” wailed local painter Stormy Stroud, 40, as he stood in sunglasses, a Hawaiian shirt and sweat pants among the surfboards at Jeffer’s Beach Rentals.

Added 36-year-old Michael Chapa, a pony-tailed La Playita regular: “I’m against it. This place is like having a special chair at home. It fits well. Little communities like this need to keep old things.”

But city officials said their hands are tied. Unless Greenwood comes to them for a conditional use permit or some sort of variance, they say, they cannot interfere with his property rights.

“I’m an open space freak, and I don’t want to see anything more built in Hermosa Beach,” said Mayor Roger Creighton. “But it’s his property and, short of opening a whorehouse, he can do anything he damn well wants with it.”

Greenwood said the fears of hotel opponents are exaggerated, and noted that the original idea of putting a hotel on The Strand came from a blue-ribbon citizens committee, not from him. And he said that not everyone in Hermosa Beach opposes the hotel.

“I’m all for it,” agreed Kevin Doyon, manager of the Pier Surf shop just off The Strand. “It’ll increase our business. If even half of those rooms are rented year-round, there’ll be thousands more people on the beach.

“And even if a quarter of those rent boards--we’re stoked, man,” Doyon said.