Half Moon Bay Hyatt Place Hotel denied

Developer Greg Jamison, who also owns the family-run Ford dealership on the property next door, said the decision was a loss for the community. He cited the various benefits, including a potential $1 million in hotel tax a year for the city, 2 acres of open space, bike and walking paths and support for downtown. 

Additionally, he’s long been a participant in town affairs, Jamison said. 

“It’s not like I’m some guy swinging in here from out of town,” he said. “I’ve been very involved with the city over the years.” 

Some residents voiced concerns that the plans — which included a three-story and two-story building connected by a breezeway located at 1191 Main St. — would be detrimental to the city’s character. The development was originally proposed as a 148-room hotel in one three-story building in 2016, but was scaled back after community concern. 

“I am concerned about where this town is going,” resident Linda Mead said. “There are many places in the U.S. where they keep a town looking a certain way, feeling a certain way, making the people happy to be here. … My feeling is we don’t need another hotel. We just don’t.” 

City staff have repeatedly cited a dearth of hotel tax as a major impetus for an upcoming $4 million structural budget deficit, a factor planning commissioners weighed as they fought through the hotel’s merits and drawbacks. 

“I think it’s going to bring money into the city,” Commissioner David Gorn said. “But I’m more concerned about, there’s an unavoidable impact, and we’re going to make a statement of overriding considerations to get past that, and our overriding considerations is money?” 

Ultimately, the Planning Commission had a responsibility to uphold the Local Coastal Land Use Plan, Gorn maintained, which makes several references to protecting the city’s scenic and visual resource areas. 

Planning commissioners were tasked with approving the environmental impact report, including overriding visual quality considerations laid out in local code if the project creates significant benefits to the community, staff said previously. 

They were also asked to approve a parking exception for planned 109 parking spaces — zoning code mandates 127, but the exception cites the project’s commitment to 40% open space as reasoning for developing less parking — and an architectural review.

Also up for discussion was the potentially vague nature of a future four-lot subdivision for residential use that the project included. 

But commissioners Steve Ruddock and Rick Hernandez, who were in the minority voting against the denial, argued the project had done its duty to mitigate visual impacts and that the LCLUP was meant as a tool to manage development, not stifle it. 

“To deny it because of this small and fleeting intrusion … it’s an unhealthy focus on the letter of the LUP and not the spirit of the LUP,” Ruddock said. “The spirit of the LUP is, we balance development, especially visitor serving development, with the protection of the coastal resources.”