COSTA MESA : Council to Consider SRO Hotel Project

The development of Costa Mesa Village, a single-room-occupancy hotel designed to give the working poor a place to live, will be considered Monday night by the City Council.

Butler-O’Bryon & Associates is proposing to convert the Travelodge Motel at 2450 Newport Blvd. into a low-income apartment complex or SRO hotel. If approved, it will be the first of its kind in Orange County, officials said.

Besides formal approval, the council on Monday will also consider loaning the developer $500,000 to help finance the project. The $4.5-million project is a joint public and private venture, with about 35% of the funding coming from public entities, said developer Merrill Butler, who has already secured a $1.7-million loan from the county.

“My hope is, it will serve as an example of what free enterprise can do in cooperation with public agencies and government to provide quality affordable housing for an extended period of time,” Butler said.

According to city officials, Costa Mesa’s share would include a $300,000 loan, which the city received from the county, and another loan of $200,000, coming from community block grant funds, which are earmarked for low-income housing.

Although the council has not formally adopted the SRO hotel plan, members in the past have expressed their willingness to bring it to the city, and officials have been working for months to make it a reality.

At this point, there has been no formal opposition from the community, officials said. In fact, some residents have come before the council in the past few months to laud the project and the council for providing affordable housing to low-income residents.

Plans call for converting the hotel into 96 single units. Each will be 380 square feet, considered smaller than most studios, and will rent for $456 a month. Rent includes a furnished apartment complete with bathroom and kitchen facilities, utilities, linens and a color television set.

Anyone who earns no more than $18,450, less than half of the county’s median income, can apply.

Although the housing will be in Costa Mesa, city residents will not be given priority. However, Muriel Berman, Costa Mesa’s redevelopment project manager, said that the city will do an extensive advertising campaign to give residents an edge.

According to the developers, an estimated 16,000 people in the Costa Mesa area would qualify, and at this time they have had about 50 names on a waiting list.

If approved, the SRO hotel, which has a projected completion date of spring, 1993, would be the first to open in Orange County. Others, including a 240-unit project in Huntington Beach, have been abandoned because of financing problems, administrative delays and neighborhood opposition.

The old YMCA building at 205 W. Civic Center Drive in Santa Ana is expected to be converted to an SRO hotel within the next two years, but has been dogged by financial problems.

The council will hold a public hearing on the Costa Mesa Village project at its Monday meeting, which begins at 6:30 p.m. at City Hall, 77 Fair Drive.