No Calabasas hotel – Our view




The Acorn’s May 19 editorial:

Advocates for slow growth do many good things.

These government watchdogs make sure the environment remains protected and that our local elected leaders keep the best interest of the community in mind when new developments are proposed.

But the watchdog group that duped the Calabasas City Council into believing a beautiful, luxurious, four-story hotel at Las Virgenes Road and the 101 Freeway should not be built because it was a few feet too tall fell short in their role as responsible ombudsmen.

Thinking of themselves and not the bigger picture, they gave bad advice to the City Council and won. The council told the builder of the Rondell Oasis Hotel, a Marriot brand, that his four-story hotel was too tall and to build a three-story structure instead, but Marriot said no, the smaller business model wouldn’t work.

Developer Richard Weintraub filed a new application to construct a self-storage facility—and oh boy, we can’t wait.

So here’s what will happen.

Instead of receiving a first-class hotel that would put $600,000 of tax revenue into the city coffers and bring jobs and economic growth to the west side of town, the community instead will get a self-storage building to look at—a frumpy project that, although smaller in stature, will clearly not provide the kind of first impression desired for a main gateway to the city.

Moral of the story: Be careful what you ask for.

Imagine if Calabasas had OK’d at a prime location in the city a ginormous storage facility instead of a Commons shopping center or some other pride of the city. Talk about Storage Wars. 

Now for the financial fall-out.

The same citizens who demand first-class programs and services for Calabasas, such as the new and expensive Senior Center, have denied the city the very tax revenue that could help pay for those amenities.

No, the city won’t go broke without the hotel, but it will be forced to make it clear that residents can’t have their cake and eat it too.

We feel bad for the many merchants in the Las Virgenes Road-Agoura Road business district who could have benefited from the spending of the Rondell Hotel patrons. Don’t think a storage unit will be quite as uplifting. But that’s life in Calabasas. Win some, lose some.

The city appears to have lost out on this one.



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