Residents appeal Aloft hotel approval, saying structure’s height would affect ‘quality of life’
The now-closed Recess Eatery in Glendale.
An appeal of the approval of an 82-foot-tall boutique hotel project in northwest Glendale that was filed by a group of concerned residents will head to the City Council for review on Tuesday.
Last month, the city’s Design Review Board unanimously approved the proposal to build an Aloft hotel at 1100 N. Brand Blvd. that will include 85 rooms.
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Resident Laurie Collins, one of the appellants, said the problem isn’t the hotel itself — which is allowed by zoning code — but mainly its height, despite it being permissible by city code as well.
Collins said the hotel would be too tall and would take over the views from the windows of the adjacent apartment buildings.
“It’s a big life-changer. It’s a quality-of-life changer … If the council could scale back the size and the mass, I think it would benefit the community,” Collins said in a phone interview.
Losing a floor or two might make it fit in more with the surrounding commercial businesses and residences, she said.
But it doesn’t appear that city staffers are budging at all and are recommending that the council uphold the Design Review Board’s decision.
In a staff report, planning staffers responded to the appellants’ claims that there was a lack of due diligence in reviewing impacts such as noise, lighting and traffic.
The Design Review Board addressed some of those concerns, while a study conducted by the planning staff found none of the impacts exceeded state-set thresholds, the report states.
“Staff finds the appeal does not present any new substantial evidence not already analyzed and discussed by the board, nor does it present any valid claims whereupon any procedure or decision was rendered in error by the board,” according to the staff report.
The appellants were also asking that an environmental impact report be conducted, but the impacts were not significant enough to necessitate such a study, the staff report states.
But the crux of the appellants’ presentation to the council on Tuesday will revolve around the appearance and aesthetics of the project.
“Our purpose is to bring the design issues before council so they can look at them and discuss the real-life significant long-term impacts on the neighborhood, which are quality-of-life issues,” Collins said.
The property owner had another proposal on the project site that was rejected last year. The plans called for an 18-unit, 62-foot-tall condominium project, but the city’s planning hearing officer shot it down because too many variances for deviations from city code were being sought.
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Arin Mikailian, arin.mikailian@latimes.com
Twitter: @ArinMikailian
