Via Real hotel project gets thumbs up from City Planning Commission

BY RYAN P. CRUZ

A 72-room hotel along Via Real earned unanimous approval at the Carpinteria Planning Commission Monday, with all board members approving of the latest version of plans for the location, whittled down from the originally planned 150room, three-story hotel.

“It has been a long process on this parcel,” said Vice Chair Glenn LaFevers.

In 2013, the property owner submitted the project as a conceptual review for two hotels at the location, each with over 70 rooms, but after a few trips back and forth between Carpinteria City Council and the Architectural Review Board (ARB) – and with a lot of feedback from city residents – the applicant adjusted the designs to better suit the city.

LaFevers said the number of iterations and early conceptual reviews allowed “a lot of community and city input,” and the fact that the project is approaching a decade “just demonstrates how rigorous the review process is” in Carpinteria.

While early plans packed the rooms three stories high and stretched to the city’s maximum height limit of 30 feet, the scaled back designs have the building’s mass broken up into several pieces, with each section topping out between 21 and 25 feet high; the city review boards found this far more in line with Carpinteria’s small-town aesthetic.

“Thirty feet is a no-no in my book,” said Planning Commission Chair Jane Benefield.

The new plans for the site, which sits on a 2.6-acre lot that was previously used as a church, include 72 rooms spread across two stories with an outdoor pool and patio, gym, business center, meeting room and fitness room totaling over 44,000 square feet. The hotel will also include a 77-sace parking lot, with five spaces reserved for employees, and 41,000 square feet of landscaping, including a “riparian woodland” protected habitat.

City Planner Nick Bobroff described the project’s lengthy journey to this point, which included two conceptual reviews in 2013 and 2014; a formal project submittal in 2016 (which was reduced to two stories and 110 rooms); several ARB hearings in 2017 to reduce overall size and layout; a redesign following input from the California Coastal Commission; and finally, preliminary approval from the ARB in November 2019.

Over that period, a “number of measures” have been added to mitigate environmental impacts, Bobroff said, such as the hotel’s stormwater management plan, which will capture runoff with permeable pavement in parking areas and utilize roof runoff to irrigate the landscape planters on site. Stormwater detention basins will collect any overflow, and the water can be released as needed to “mimic historic drainage patterns,” he said.

Montecito Law Group

The project’s approval included a list of conditions to mitigate environmental impacts, along with another new Coastal Commission provision which requires that some of the rooms be made “available to disadvantaged communities.”

“This is new for us,” Bobroff said of the low-cost room requirement. The requirement was put into place around 2015, he added, and this is the first hotel project in the city that would be affected by the change.

Kush Nathu of RAM Hotels, the landowner and project applicant, spoke during the meeting, saying he was “beyond excited” to be at this point, and that “it’s been a long journey.” He thanked the city staff and community for helping him along the way and said he “looks forward to being part of the community.”

While he had no specific response to questions about how the low-cost rooms would be advertised and administered, saying it was also the first hotel project he had developed with that specific requirement, he assured the commission that he would work with city staff and local organizations to make sure the rooms were made available to those who needed them.

He also expressed some interest in Benefield’s suggestion that the hotel offer some kind of shuttle service to the downtown and beach areas, saying he would work with staff to explore the idea.

All four members of the commission were in favor of the project as presented, and the board unanimously approved the development plan and coastal development permit to demolish the existing former church and begin construction on the hotel, along with a “mitigated negative declaration” listing conditions to reduce the project’s environmental impacts.

“I’ve seen it from the beginning to now,” Benefield said. “In the beginning it was too much, and you narrowed it down, and you’ve listened to the community.”

559 SAN YSIDRO ROAD, SUITE J MONTECITO, CA 93108

Stefanie and her team are just great! Updated my trust and will very thoroughly and were wonderful to work with. She made me feel confident and prepared for the future. Highly recommend her firm.

— Jayne Diaz

STEFANIE HERRINGTON ATTORNEY

(805) 293-6363

WWW.MONTECITOLAWGROUP.COM

STEFANIE HERRINGTON ATTORNEY

STEFANIE HERRINGTON

STEFANIE HERRINGTON

ATTORNEY

ATTORNEY

559 SAN YSIDRO ROAD, SUITE J MONTECITO, CA 93108 (805) 293-6363

559 SAN YSIDRO ROAD, SUITE J MONTECITO, CA 93108 stefanie@montecitolawgroup.com

559 SAN YSIDRO ROAD, SUITE J MONTECITO, CA 93108 (805) 293-6363

559 SAN YSIDRO ROAD, SUITE J MONTECITO, CA 93108

(805) 293-6363 stefanie@montecitolawgroup.com

MONTECITOLAWGROUP.COM stefanie@montecitolawgroup.com

MONTECITOLAWGROUP.COM

(805) 293-6363

MONTECITOLAWGROUP.COM stefanie@montecitolawgroup.com

MONTECITOLAWGROUP.COM

Mabel Irene Newcomer Stephens O’Rork 05/05/1925 – 02/18/2023

Mabel Irene Newcomer Stephens

O’Rork was born on May 5, 1925, at home in Arlington, WA, to Calvin and Grace (Edith) Newcomer. She was the youngest of eight children. She passed away peacefully at Mission Terrace Convalescent Hospital in Santa Barbara, CA, on Feb. 18, 2023, at the age of 97. She grew up in Washington, Arizona and California. She met her first husband, Dean Stephens, during World War II, just after high school. Dean was on leave from the Marine Corps, when they met in 1943 in Oakland, CA. Their son, Gary, was born in National City, CA, in 1945, just prior to the end of the war. They moved to Idaho after the war to be near family. Daughters, Valerie, Vicki and Lisa followed in 1947, 1951 and 1952, respectively. Employment opportunities and the cold winters of Idaho encouraged the young family to move back to California in 1953, choosing Alameda for their new home.

After settling in Alameda, Dean started building a small sailboat which he named the Fair Dinkum. Mabel started a career that she would follow for many years to come; she became a very popular and well-loved bank teller at local Bank of America banks. After selling the Fair Dinkum in 1959, Dean built the Charity, which launched in 1962. The family moved aboard with plans to someday sail to New Zealand. That dream never saw fruition, but in the summer of 1965, Mabel, Dean and the two youngest daughters (Vicki and Lisa) sailed to Hawaii. They returned that fall to San Francisco and the Sausalito area, where once again, Mabel worked at the Bank of America. The family took one more sailing adventure, sailing down the coast of Baja, California, and the South Pacific Coast of Mexico for six months. They returned to