Goleta City Council at Impasse on Proposed Hotel for Hollister

The Goleta City Council, minus member Jean Blois, arrived at an impasse Tuesday evening after deliberating on the fate of the proposed Residence Inn at 6300 Hollister Ave. in Goleta.

The project, a 140-room, three-story Marriott extended-stay hotel on 3.79 acres, has been the subject of controversy, as members of the Chumash community assert their cultural heritage and project proponents insist that an adequate amount of work has been done to determine that effects from the 99,824-square-foot hotel would be insignificant.

Both sides have argued their cases through several Goleta Planning Commission meetings, and meet-and-confer sessions for most of the past year.

According to the Chumash, the site of the proposed hotel is directly over an ancient Chumash midden and is close enough to a sacred burial ground in the vicinity. It is also the last significant cultural site of its kind in the area.

“That is just a big square of concrete and mortar,” said Sam Cohen, representing the Chumash community. “And you’re sticking it on top of a Chumash village.”

The hotel’s backers, representatives from construction company R.D. Olson and Dudek, an environmental and engineering consulting firm, contend that several archaeological examinations of the site have not yielded evidence that would make the site culturally significant.

The predicament comes at a fiscally sensitive time for the city, as it deals with a projected budget downturn and general fallout from the sinking economy. The hotel is estimated to be able to bring in about $600,000 in transient occupancy tax to Goleta in its first year.

The city is also trying to figure out the actual need for more hotel rooms in its boundaries. Local hoteliers have expressed their concern that additional hotels, such as the recently approved Rincon Palms Hotel and Restaurant at the corner of Hollister Avenue and Storke Road, would decrease their profits.

Meanwhile, the city staff asserts that adequate work has been done to prove that there are no major archaeological elements at the Residence Inn site.

“Many borings were conducted on the site, many shovel test pits, several trenches,” said Steve Chase, the city’s director of planning and environmental services. There were also several meet-and-confer sessions and monitoring of the excavations by Chumash representatives, he said. Much of the information was taken from previous environmental impact studies in the area.

Council members Roger Aceves and Jonny Wallis were not convinced that the environmental assessment would be adequate enough to justify construction on the site, which has been a registered archaeological site since the 1920s.

“We need at least a focused EIR,” said Wallis, referring to letters sent by several archaeologists, two of whom had worked on the site in the past, that called for a deeper review.

Wallis and Aceves blocked a motion by council member Eric Onnen, seconded by Mayor Michael Bennett to approve the project. They were in turn blocked by Onnen and Bennett on a motion to require an Environmental Impact Report specific to the cultural heritage of the site.

Ultimately, the council voted to continue the public hearing on Nov. 11, a date by which the council will have had time to study further the information given them, and also when Blois will have recovered from her accident last Friday and be able to weigh in on the topic.

Noozhawk staff writer Sonia Fernandez can be reached at sfernandez@noozhawk.com.