DANA POINT : Razing of Old Motel Delayed by Planners

The Planning Commission has postponed plans to tear down the 60-year-old Dana Villa Motel at the entrance to Dana Point Harbor so that a new hotel can be built on the site.

The commission voted 3 to 2 this week to ask architect Lynn Muir and motel owner Gary Folgner to reconsider the height of the proposed project and bring it back to the commission Jan. 8. The old two-story motel, which consists of 49 rooms and an attached restaurant at the corner of Coast Highway and Del Obispo Street, would be replaced by a four-story hotel with about 150 rooms and a 5,000-square-foot restaurant.

While several commissioners praised the “Santa Barbara Mission-style” design of the project, they balked at its proposed height of 35 feet, with an elevator shaft sticking up an additional six feet in some places. With Dana Point in the process of writing its first general plan--the city’s blueprint for commercial and residential construction--some members of the commission expressed concern that other builders might ask for similar heights in their projects.

“I don’t think putting four floors in 35 feet is the optimum way to go,” Commissioner Lynn Dawson said. “If we start doing that, we’ll set a precedent in the general plan. We’ll end up with the Grand Canyon of buildings on either side of Coast Highway.”

Folgner, a 35-year Dana Point resident who also owns the popular Coach House nightclub in nearby San Juan Capistrano, was not happy with the postponement.

“We’ve been working on this project for 2 1/2 years and another year with the county. What can we do in the next 30 days; go back and redesign the whole thing?” he asked the commission. “I hate to see all the time that has gone into this project go to waste.”

Folgner said that he and Muir had attempted to make the project unobtrusive by moving the bulk of the hotel away from Coast Highway.

“This building was designed to maximize what we could do and still keep the site lines down Coast Highway,” Folgner said. “When you drive down Coast Highway (after the project is finished), you’ll see green and white water views.”

Because of the age of the motel and its historical significance as one of the first structures built in Dana Point, Folgner has promised to dedicate a wall in the new hotel’s lobby to early photographs of the area.