Final Hurdle Cleared for Building Hotel on Strand : Hermosa Beach: Developer David Greenwood is given a building permit for a 172-room structure, ending seven years of wrangling. The groundbreaking is expected within six months.

A Brentwood developer who for seven years has sought to build a hotel on The Strand in Hermosa Beach received his building permit this week, clearing the way for construction of one of the most debated projects in the city’s history.

David Greenwood said he will break ground within the next six months on the $35-million beachfront hotel, which will take up the 1300 block of The Strand where the defunct Strand Bathhouse now stands.

Plans call for a four-story, 172-room structure draped with greenery and surrounded by palm trees. Staffers at the California Coastal Commission, which approved the project in March, called it a “Holiday Inn-style” project.

But Greenwood said the hotel will be comparable to upscale inns in La Jolla and Laguna Beach, with “an atmosphere of casual elegance” and an ocean-view restaurant that will run the length of the block.

In addition to the Bathhouse, the project will displace several businesses, including the well-known La Playita cafe. Susan Cohen, who owns La Playita with her husband, Harold, said the restaurant will be relocated a short distance away, to the site of the former Cafe Christopher on 14th Street.

“We’re disappointed. We don’t think the hotel really belongs there,” Cohen said.

Other residents, including community activist Parker Herriott, have complained that despite the hotel’s size, city officials never gave them an opportunity to protest the project. Because the hotel will be built to code on private commercial property, no public hearing was required under the municipal code.

But most beach-area merchants and restaurateurs said they are delighted the hotel will be built, and that the boarded-up Bathhouse will finally be razed.

“Some don’t want the tourists it would bring, but I want the business. I’d like the tourists,” said Shar Franklin, manager of Good Stuff On The Strand, a cafe across the street from the bathhouse.

Added Leslie Newton, a lawyer who practices and lives in Hermosa Beach and who owns Loreto Plaza on Pier Avenue: “I think it will have a very positive effect on downtown. It’ll offer amenities to visitors and residents alike. And it will bring more shoppers as opposed to beach-goers, which will attract a better type of retail business to the existing commercial buildings.”

Newton, who is also a member of the city’s Downtown Revitalization Committee, complained that “most of the successful businesses in downtown Hermosa cater to our children--to younger kids going to the beach and buying T-shirts and shorts and things like that. But there’s nothing for someone like me to shop for, unless I’m buying for one of my kids.”

The stretch of beach where the hotel will rise has for years been tied in with one of the city’s most vexing issues: What to do with the two blocks where the old Biltmore Hotel used to stand.

Until its demolition in the 1960s, the Biltmore Hotel took up most of the 1400 block of The Strand, with its Bathhouse next door at 13th Street and The Strand. But over time, the once-grand establishment deteriorated. By the time it was razed, it was a low-rent residential hotel that many in the community saw as an eyesore.

La Playita’s Cohen, for example, recalled taking swimming lessons at the Biltmore’s indoor pool as a child, and said her memories were mostly of “the musty smell and chipping paint and the sound of the place--like an echo chamber!”

The site was taken over by the city, but residents could not agree on what to do with it. City Hall’s specific plan for the site involved linking the 0.85-acre Biltmore plot with the privately owned 1300 block to make way for a 260-room hotel. But the hotel idea was voted down at the polls, along with just about every other plan imaginable for the site, from skyscrapers to a public park.

It was Greenwood and a partner who initially were to have built the 260-room hotel. But as the squabbling continued over the years, the developer quietly completed his acquisition of the 1300 block and went ahead with plans for a smaller hotel.

Because the block was already zoned for commercial development and the city had already certified an environmental impact report for the larger hotel, city officials had little leverage over Greenwood’s scaled-down project. In an executive session in 1989--called because the council at the time feared litigation by Greenwood--he agreed to meet a number of conditions that would be attached to his building permit.

This year, as a result of the Greenwood affair, the City Council passed a new ordinance requiring public review of virtually all new buildings in the city. Included in the ordinance was a deadline that gave Greenwood only six months to submit blueprints and plans explaining how he would mitigate the impact of construction on the densely packed beach area.

Among other things, he promised to hire a consultant to make sure excavation does not affect nearby buildings. Critics note that the foundation of Greenwood’s hotel will be 35 feet underground, 25 feet below the water table. The excavation and siphoning, they said, may cause surrounding property to sink.

Greenwood said the hotel will open in 1992.

The fate of the Biltmore site next door, meanwhile, remains under debate. The City Council has voted to zone it for single-family homes, a plan that is before the Coastal Commission.

If the commission approves the zoning, the council has agreed to put the plan to a voter referendum. Meanwhile, civic activist Herriott has vowed to put a competing plan before the voters that would make a public park of the site.

Greenwood said that, having gotten the go-ahead for his project, he has no strong feelings about what goes in on the block next door.