Faded Dreams : Costa Mesa Motels That Once Lured Vacationers : Now House Homeless, Suspected Criminals, City Says

Sunset Boulevard it’s not. But Newport Boulevard, with its rows of hotels and motels, has its share of problems.

There was a time when the motels actually served as overnight establishments for tourists in town to spend the day at the beach or go to Disneyland.

But these days, the Costa Mesa City Council is considering whether to redevelop the two-mile stretch between Mesa Drive and 19th Street, acting on concerns that many of the motels have turned into residential rentals, some of them housing suspected criminals or presenting substandard or unsafe accommodations. And Newport Boulevard isn’t the only street the city feels is suffering because of motels and hotels turning into de facto apartment complexes.

Although hotel managers and clerks say most of their tenants are hard-working people who simply don’t have the money to make first and last months’ rent for an apartment, Costa Mesa police say a few who frequent the overnight establishments are clearly up to no good and use the rooms to operate drug rings and house stolen goods.

Police Chief David L. Snowden has concerns about several places he passes on his way home from work every evening.

“I drive past them and I’m always seeing (narcotics) deals going on and prostitutes walking up and down the street,” Snowden said. “I’m not going to name names, but if they were hotels in the true sense of the word, we wouldn’t have that kind of environment. The solution is to move them. Get rid of them.”

The City Council two weeks ago voted to form an advisory task force of local merchants and residents to explore redevelopment and other options for the motel row.

“Whether we’re going to knock them down, redevelop them or convert them into something else . . . that’s what we need to think about,” said Councilwoman Sandra L. Genis. “We want businesses to be successful, but not so successful that they bring in the wrong clients and it upsets the neighbors.”

But motel owners say they have turned to monthly rentals precisely because their establishments have not been successful as tourist accommodations. They have been stung not only by a sagging state economy but also by the recent completion of the Costa Mesa Freeway extension, which causes traffic to bypass the businesses.

“The owners have taken the path of least resistance,” notes Walter Davenport, chairman of the Costa Mesa Planning Commission. “There’s not enough traffic . . . and their conversion to long-term residency is causing safety problems.”

Still, advocates for the homeless point out that some of the hotels and motels--the nicer ones--serve a positive purpose: They provide housing for families that otherwise would have no place to sleep.

“Obviously motel living is not the solution,” said Karen McGlinn, executive director for Share Our Selves, a nonprofit organization that serves the poor of Orange County by providing housing and emergency financial assistance. “But sometimes they’re the only thing we have to rely on in an emergency situation.”

Nonetheless, there are a few hotels along Newport that SOS does not send homeless people to.

“I feel sorry for the poor traveler who doesn’t have a clue and checks into one of these places,” said Mac Ashbaugh, a Police Department custody officer who processes at least 15 people a month listing their last place of residence as a hotel or motel.

Ashbaugh said typical arrests range from alleged possession of stolen property to drugs to trespassing to grand theft auto. Some are suspected of stealing from discount and department stores, he said, so they can pay the rent and support their drug habit--whether it’s cocaine, crack, heroin or methamphetamine, the drugs most commonly confiscated.

On Harbor Boulevard, the Bel Congo motel shut down earlier this month--but not before plain-clothes police officers broke up an alleged forgery ring and found phony identifications being made for check-writing purposes, authorities said.

When the Coastal Inn, a motel on the southeast corner of Newport Boulevard and Santa Isabel Street, was ordered to shut down the back part of its complex because of hundreds of alleged building code violations, police warned other hotel operators along the boulevard to keep an eye out for spillover residents.

“We screen on a regular basis,” said Lisa Lu, manager of the Sunshine Hotel on Newport Boulevard. “If they don’t have identification, we won’t let them stay, but there are others who won’t leave their rooms at checkout time, and that’s when we have to call police.”

Councilman Gary Monahan said the city is looking at the very definition of motel .

“There are some who lived in some of the motels for as long as 10 years, and that changes the definition of a motel to the point where it’s more like a studio apartment,” he said. “And there are laws and regulations that say that if it’s going to be a motel, then it should stay a motel.”

As a matter of policy, some motels and hotels require customers who rent week to week to check out after 28 days. The Regency Inn is one such hotel.

“If they’re good tenants, then they are allowed back in the next day,” said Brad McDermott, a desk clerk. “But it’s up to the owner’s discretion, and that’s only if they’re not suspected of dealing drugs and so forth.”

McDermott said the hotel averages 15 tenants who live month to month at a cost of $220 a week.

One desk clerk who wished to remain anonymous said converting the motels along Newport Boulevard or removing them would only complicate matters by displacing many of the tenants, leaving them to fend for themselves in the streets.

“It’s the chicken and the egg,” he said. “Which came first? Is it because of us that these people are coming here or are they just here, and we’re merely providing them with a place to stay?”

Don Lamm, the city’s planning director, said he only wants to make sure that hotels and motels along Newport and Harbor boulevards comply with city standards, especially the lodges that were built in the 1960s and the early 1950s, before the city was incorporated.

He said at least half a dozen of the estimated 30 motels and hotels in the city will be closed down if the landlords don’t comply with codes soon.

“Customers have to be assured that fire extinguishers are there and that smoke detectors work,” he said. “We find electrical wire switches that have been vandalized, and in one case somebody had knocked off the piping to a water heater, and carbon monoxide might have seeped through the building.”

Such violations are typical in the older hotels, Lamm said.

“The city is actively pursuing all the motels,” he said. “All of them can expect to be visited in the next few years.”