Approval Sought for Extended-Stay Hotel

The Atlanta-based Homestead Village hoteliers are hoping their plan for a 142-unit, extended-stay hotel will be just the right project for a site on Ventura Boulevard that has had a history of failed ventures.

The site at the corner of Ventura and Alhama Drive has had many restaurant and nightclub incarnations since it first opened as a Coco’s in 1967. Later it was a Hungry Tiger and then a Rueben’s restaurant, a Denim & Diamonds country and western bar and, most recently, a nightclub called XIT.

Paul Crabtree, development manager for Homestead, said the site was a good choice for a hotel because it is centrally located to Warner Center, which has many of the types of businesses that would send their employees to the area for long periods.

He said the company is optimistic that it will win approval from the city for a zoning change and a conditional-use permit to develop the site.

“I think we’ll be welcomed there because it has been a problem site for the area,” he said, adding that the hotel would finally give the land some permanence. “We’re in it for the long haul.”

Crabtree said his company is in negotiations to buy the site from the Warner family, who also developed Warner Center.

Larry Calemine, a spokesman for the family, said the purchase offer from Homestead was better than any lease offer the Warners had seen. The property is in escrow, he said, and is expected to close in a few months.

The hotel is designed to be a four-story, 65,205-square-foot building, with tile roofs and an underground parking garage.

Homestead Village, which also has just won approval from the city of Calabasas to build another hotel there, said its hotels cater to business people who stay an average of two weeks or more at a time.

Crabtree said the company is unconcerned about building two new hotels within a few miles of each other to go after the same client base. The chain has about eight other hotels in Southern California and 70 across the country.