MANHATTAN BEACH, CA — A public hearing on a proposed new 162-room hotel with full alcohol service and a separate retail and office building at 600 South Sepulveda Boulevard will be held this Wednesday, Oct. 14 when the Manhattan Beach Planning Commission meets at 3 p.m.
The site is a 65,419 square-foot lot with street frontage along Sepulveda Boulevard, Tennyson Street and Chabela Drive. An El Torito restaurant with full alcohol service occupied the existing 8,500 square-foot restaurant building on the site until vacating the space late in 2018. Skechers has been occupying the site since 2019, using the restaurant building as a corporate cafeteria and meeting space while using the parking lot for overflow parking for Skechers employees impacted by Skechers construction of new office buildings along Sepulveda Boulevard. The existing restaurant building would be demolished.
City staff is recommending that the Planning Commission approve the master use permit “subject to certain conditions”, according to an agenda posted online on the city website. The hotel is set to be 81,755 square feet and the retail and office building will offer 16,348 square-feet. The entire project will include 158 parking spaces.
The master use permit asks for a reduction in the number of parking spaces: 243 would normally be required; they are asking for 158. The permit also asks for full alcohol service, including distilled spirits, at the hotel, “limited” live entertainment that must end by 9 p.m. and operating hours of 7 a.m.-1 a.m. daily.
The proposed hotel would be four stories with limited amenities for guests, including a small fitness center, business center, and meeting room. Patrons of the hotel and their guests will have limited menu options for breakfast to complement the hotel’s buffet-style breakfast service located on the ground floor lobby area. Limited menu options for appetizers and other selections will be available at other times of the day along with beverage service also to be provided on the ground floor. Room service is not provided.
The hotel includes an outdoor terrace on the fourth floor facing Sepulveda Boulevard where alcoholic beverages and limited food service such as appetizers will be offered to hotel guests. The hotel developers are asking for the outdoor terrace to be allowed to operate between 7 a.m. and 1 a.m. seven days a week.
The hotel applicant, MB Hotel Partners, LLC, is considering returning to the Planning Commission at a later date to classify the downstairs dining and upstairs terrace for use as a restaurant.
A surface parking lot will offer 28 parking spaces and a subterranean parking garage
will provide 130 spaces. The retail/office building will be two stories with retail on the first floor and offices on the second.
Vehicles would access the site from Sepulveda Boulevard and Tennyson Street.
The developer will be required to construct new six-foot wide sidewalks on Chabela Drive and Tennyson Street and an eight-foot wide sidewalk along Sepulveda Boulevard.
MB Hotel Partners, LLC, filed their application for the master use permit with the City of Manhattan Beach on August 9, 2019.