HomeMy WebLinkAbout02-17-2015 PH1 WhitakerSubject: FW: Request for modify the Monterey Hotel proposal
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From: Stephen Whitaker [ mailto :steveCawhitstrategies.com] RECEIVED
Sent: Monday, February 09, 2015 11:17 AM
To: Marx, Jan; Ashbaugh, John; Carpenter, Dan; Christianson, Carlyn; Rivoire, Dan; Mejia, Anthony FEB 0 9 2015
Cc: elizabeth whitaker
Subject: Request for modify the Monterey Hotel proposal , SLO C'1 -rY C1..,ERMV
I am writing to request that the City Council consider certain modifications to the Monterey Hotel
proposal. My family and I live at 1720 San Luis Drive, on the creek side property directly behind
the Quality Inn and Suites hotel and Daylight Home & Garden (a.k.a. Cuesta Cadillac).
We know already why it is like to have a large hotel like the one that is being considered. Living
behind the Quality Inn & Suites is a daily struggle against noise pollution, air pollution, and solid
waste pollution. We know the precedent that would be set by the current Monterey Hotel
proposal, that it would be replicated —or worse —on the much larger Daylight Home & Garden
property.
When we moved into our home twelve years ago we often used the creek part of our back yard as a
quiet place of refuge. The downhill spiral of the Quality Inn & Suites and its daily overturn of
occupants has forced us to allow the entire area to grow in as a buffer to the unsightly activities in
the inadequately buffered parking behind the hotel. For this is where all the nastiness takes place:
idling trucks that literally make our windows rattle as they make deliveries at all hours; tour buses
idling as they wait for riders to board; car alarms; motorcycle groups assembling in the early hours
and testing their throttles; heavy -duty carpet cleaning trucks; and, of course, the shipping container
with all the maintenance equipment for the hotel. During any given week, I speed dial the hotel
manager to ask the that these activities— prohibited under Ordinance 1130 be moved to the side of
the hotel so that I do not have to wear noise - reduction headphones in order to sit in my own back
yard. The manager tells me to call ordinance enforcement, who comes a few days later. It never
seems to end. No, I am not exaggerating.
A 102 bed hotel does not belong along a fragile creek next to a quiet neighborhood. This is what
the residence of the San Luis Drive neighborhood fought for a generation ago, and which have
unfortunately had to keep fighting for every five years. The property is suited to a boutique hotel,
30 to 40 beds maximum, for quiet guests who would pay for access to a quiet creek in a protected
buffer zone, not stadium seating on balconies overlooking our back yards. A 102 -room hotel on a
property of the size proposed is not a boutique hotel. It's a human beehive rotating occupants so
fast that the mattresses won't even cool down between visits. The owners are trying to put ten
pounds of flour in a five pound sack. If they can't make money from a hotel right -sized to the
property, then they should sell it to someone who can.
i
The proposed height of the hotel is also astonishing. If a similar hotel were built at Daylight Home
& Garden, I estimate that it would be 7 -9 stories above our back yard. Metaphorically, it's like
measuring the height of a breaking wave from the back side, not the front. Four stories on the
Monterey side becomes seven stories_ of concrete balconies reading to break across the San Luis
Drive side of the creek.
Thanking you for your time in service to the San Luis Obispo community,
Stephen B. Whitaker
On behalf of Elizabeth, Sarah, Emma, and Ernestine Whitaker
1730 San Luis Drive
San Luis Obispo, CA 93401
s teve (2whits trategie s . c om