DANA POINT : Motel to Be Razed for 4-Story Hotel

Dana Point Harbor’s “gateway,” the nickname for the intersection of Coast Highway and Del Obispo Street, is about to lose a long-familiar sight. After 60 years at that corner, the Dana Villa Motel will soon be torn down and replaced by a new hotel three times larger.

While some of the old-timers in the community may miss the somewhat haggard, two-story white stucco motel, its destruction will not come too soon for Robert Folgner, who in 1956 purchased what was then a motel, restaurant and gas station.

Asked if he would miss the old building, Folgner--who along with his wife, Isabel, raised four sons there and plans to replace it with a luxury, four-story hotel--replied: “Hell no, I’m ready to go right now.”

Demolition of the Dana Villa will begin after Folgner selects a financing partner for the new hotel, which is expected to cost about $10 million.

“Several investors have expressed interest,” said Folgner, who indicated that a Japanese firm is among the suitors. “But we’ve been waiting to get an approved deal from the city.”

The approval came last week, when city planning commissioners voted 4 to 1 to approve plans for Folgner’s new buildings, designed in the “Santa Barbara Mission style” by Dana Point architect Lynn Muir. The approval ended a five-year struggle by Muir and the Folgners to cut through the bureaucratic red tape of the city and the county.

At about the same time Folgner and Muir won approval for the hotel from the county back in 1988, Dana Point incorporation leaders had also won their fight for cityhood. The culmination of the two events put the project back into the approval process again, Muir said.

“We had approval for the motel but no (city) permits, so we had to start over,” Muir explained.

The final plans approved by the city Planning Commission calls for a four-story, 148-room hotel on the site, which will include an indoor-outdoor restaurant, pool and spa. The new facility will be the city’s third largest hotel, after the Ritz-Carlton and Dana Point Resort.

The hotel plan is a far cry from the original design, which was for a 10-story hotel on the 1.6-acre site overlooking Doheny State Beach.

“I still think that kind of project is what this site deserves,” said Folgner’s son, Gary, who started out pumping gas at the Dana Villa and is now a partner in the project with his father. Gary Folgner also owns several nightclubs in California and Las Vegas, including the popular Coach House in neighboring San Juan Capistrano.

“We had it designed so no one’s view would be cut off,” said Gary Folgner of the 10-story idea, “but there was no way anyone was going to let us do that.”

As it was, the Folgners had to give up an estimated 2,050 square feet of property to widen Coast Highway and Dana Harbor Drive to win the city approval to build the hotel, Muir said. Each of the two streets will get an extra lane to help ease the traffic problem at “one of the worst, if not the worst intersection in the city,” according to Lance Schulte, the city’s senior planner.

The Folgners estimate that the final cost of construction will be $10 million. Robert Folgner, 70, said he never foresaw spending that kind of money when he hocked everything he had to buy the property for $250,000 nearly 35 years ago.

“You really don’t think about those kinds of changes,” he said. “When I moved here in 1952, you could buy a view lot for $500. I bought three acres of beachfront in San Clemente for $10,000.”