Some Turn Up Noses at New Luxury Hotel
Neighbors of Burbank’s first upscale extended-stay hotel have a vision: an onslaught of out-of-town, cocktail-swilling studio egos invading their shady patch of town.
Despite its marble baths, 300-thread-count sheets and down duvets, some residents believe the hotel will mean plunging property values, clogged traffic and drunken guests staggering through the streets of mid-century duplexes, pastel apartment complexes and shotgun houses in the heart of Burbank’s media district.
And it doesn’t help, they say, that Burbank officials ignored their concerns and even lied about plans for The Graciela Burbank, expected to open next month with room prices ranging from $170 to $500 a night.
“The studio people would probably be happier on the Westside” than in a hotel boasting views of a tired strip mall with a 24-hour Vons grocery store and sounds of honking horns and skidding tires from the nearby Ventura Freeway, said Don Elsmore, a 40-year Burbank resident. “There’s no need for the frills.”
But city boosters say they’re confident that residents will change their minds once the 101-room hotel opens.
“We’re not Beverly Hills,” said Susan Bowers, executive director of the Burbank Chamber of Commerce, “but doesn’t Burbank deserve to have nice hotels?”
Originally, the 33,000-square-foot site at 322 N. Pass Ave. was slated for a Homestead Studio Suites Hotel, a nationwide chain offering moderate short-term housing. Neighbors were fine with the project after city officials assured them that the hotel would have no bar or restaurant serving alcohol.
In 2000, Pass Avenue Associates, an investor group, acquired the property for more than $2 million, with plans to build a luxury hotel that would serve alcohol and cater to Warner Bros., Disney, Universal, NBC, ABC, DreamWorks SKG, Nickelodeon and other studios clustered in the San Fernando Valley. Beverly Hills-based Belvedere Hotels and Resorts is to manage the hotel.
Neighbors feel betrayed.
They question why the city allowed The Graciela Burbank to forge ahead without holding hearings so the public could respond to the new project.
Although city officials said no laws were broken in the process, they admitted making mistakes, and mostly blamed staff who have since retired.
City Manager Bud Ovrom issued a two-page apology to the City Council and sent an e-mail to his staff acknowledging that “we looked like a bunch of idiots [at best--liars at worst].”
Few neighbors disagreed with that assessment.
“The city sold us out to please the studios, as if we’re a bunch of bumpkins,” said Lori McCaffrey, a 13-year resident who said the hotel will bring traffic and debauchery and reduce property values.
McCaffrey scoffed at the idea of top entertainment executives reveling in the hotel’s luxury features, such as a garden rooftop (overlooking the red lights of cars crawling on the freeway) and afternoon high tea. “What studio executive is going to have high tea?” she said. “Well, maybe if it’s Long Island tea....
“It’s not the Beverly Wilshire,” she said. “This isn’t Beverly Hills; this is Burbank. This isn’t Rodeo Drive; it’s Pass Avenue. Who is going to want to stay here?”
Studio executives, who city officials say supported the project, declined to comment.
The Graciela Burbank promised to be good neighbors. “We sort of understand why they’re upset,” said Margit Haut, the hotel’s director of sales. “But we are going to be the one and only premier property in Burbank.”
Many neighbors care only that it will serve alcohol.
“There’s no way to predict activity at the bar,” said Suzanne Benoit, a congregant at Burbank Church of Religious Science, across the street from the hotel.
The church hosts Alcoholics Anonymous meetings five days a week and has had problems with a bar in the strip mall, where drunks have wobbled into the parking lot and urinated in flower beds.
“We just don’t need the problems,” Benoit said.
