August 26, 2020
Subject: Planning Commission – 9.2.20 – Item 9-A: Miramar Project Review
1) This is a huge new hotel, doubling the size of the existing one, and causing increased usage of water and power, both of which are already in short supply.
This isn’t a remodel or a model of a sustainable building: It’s a teardown of the existing hotel buildings (except the small landmarked one) for a massive new hotel twice the former’s size. The hotel would rise 130 feet along 2nd Street with a design that walls itself off from its surroundings except on Ocean Avenue.
2) The neighborhood traffic circulation issues are serious and haven‘t been resolved.
There is a plethora of serious, unresolved traffic circulation issues for the entire surrounding neighborhood that were NOT studied appropriately in the EIR. Keeping the new hotel’s main entrance on Wilshire wasn’t even studied although residents repeatedly asked that it be included as a better alternative to a 2nd Street main entrance. The EIR does, however, disclose the painful level of circulation problems that would exist for the surrounding streets, including Ocean, California, and 2nd Street if the project were to be approved as is.
3) There’s no benefit to the City or residents to allow condos as part of the hotel; just increased density, traffic, and city services.
Residents also asked that the hotel reconsider adding 195,000 square feet of new condo units (60 units x 3000 sf) on the upper floors. Ultra luxury condos for transient owners/renters may be a financing tool for the hotel, but they aren’t a community benefit. Their occupants aren’t likely to live here or be stakeholders in our community. The condos contribute greatly to the bulk of the hotel and its height.
In reality, these are giant hotel rooms. Unless they are treated as such, guests won’t pay bed taxes to the City for staying in them. So, supporting them would be supporting a tax dodge at a time when our City greatly needs to shore up its finances.
For these reasons, SMCLC opposes the project as currently proposed and urges the Planning Commission to recommend that the hotel re-evaluate the circulation impacts of the current design and re-design the project without condos.
