Residents will have a chance to have their say this Thursday night about the recently announced Ocean Avenue Project, a proposed 22-story hotel on the north corner of Ocean Avenue and Santa Monica Boulevard.
Thursday’s meeting will be held at 7 pm in the Multi-Purpose Room of the Santa Monica Main Library, 601 Santa Monica Blvd.
The project proposes a 244-foot mixed-use building that includes a 125-room hotel, 22 condominiums, 19 replacement rent-controlled units, affordable housing, a public rooftop observation deck, and street-level retail and restaurants.
The project also includes a new 36,000 square-foot museum campus that consists of two land marked buildings that will be adaptively reused and preserved as well as a Gehry Partners designed cultural building with exhibition space and museum plaza.
The project is being proposed by M. David Paul Associates and Worthe Real Estate Group – the owners of the land at 1353 Ocean Avenue as well as 2700 Colorado Avenue (MTV, Lionsgate Entertainment).
Both Frank Gehry and developer Jeffe Worthe are expected to attend Thursday’s meeting.
Neighborhood leaders concerned about the pace and scale of development in Santa Monica are expected to pack the community meeting.
“This history of height near the coast in Santa Monica has been hard fought for decades and residents have turned back high towers time and again where they would alter the unique character of the city and transform it into a high-rise haven,” said Mary Marlow, an Ocean Park resident and respected neighborhood leader. “This Gehry proposal is a tower appropriate for Miami. We aren’t Miami.”
