SAN CLEMENTE : Senior Housing at Hotel Is Backed

The City Council this week said it supports a plan to convert the Ramada Inn into low-cost senior citizen housing, although council members said they would consider any viable last-minute plan to keep the hotel operating.

In a special joint meeting between the City Council and Planning Commission Monday, officials said they didn’t have much hope that the city’s largest hotel, which is now operating under bankruptcy protection, would ever become profitable.

In the past, city officials had been cool to the idea of converting the 110-room Ramada Inn, on Avenida Pico, to senior housing, saying they feared losing the tax revenues the hotel generates for the city.

But Community Development Director James S. Holloway said a recent study indicates that the city might not lose that much tax revenue if the conversion took place.

The $8.4-million Ramada Inn, which has long operated well under the 65% occupancy rate needed for the venture to break even, currently generates about $70,000 to $100,000 in transient occupancy tax each year for the city, according to the report, prepared by Holloway and city Housing Coordinator Leslie Davis.

“There would probably be no net loss in transient occupancy tax because patrons would simply shift their business from the Ramada to other motel and hotel lodgings located within the city,” the report said.

Councilman Thomas Lorch was the lone holdout against the conversion, saying that the city should do whatever it takes to save the Ramada Inn, even though the hotel has already had three owners since it was built nine years ago.

“I’m going to be hard-pressed to give up on the commercial viability of this site,” he said.

San Clemente Senior Services, a nonprofit organization that operates another senior housing complex in town, originally proposed the conversion in 1989, Executive Director Marilyn Ditty said.

Now that the council has said it supports the conversion, Ditty said the group will continue negotiations with hotel owner Larry Gold and try to arrange financing within the next six weeks. Although the City Council has expressed support for the concept of the conversion, it must still approve detailed proposals for the project.

Byron Marshall, who works with San Clemente Senior Services, said there is a heavy demand for senior housing. The hotel will accommodate about 160 people, but more than 370 seniors have already signed up to live there, he said.

“They’ll get living that is decent, affordable, safe and convenient,” Marshall said.

Under the proposal, seniors would pay $350 to $650 per month in rent and receive two meals a day.

In its vote, however, the council also said it would be open to any last-minute bid to keep the Ramada Inn operating as a hotel.

“The door is open,” Mayor Joseph Anderson said. “But someone is going to have to come in with a lot of creativity and a lot of money if it is going to remain a hotel.”