By Linda Taaffe

Plans to place a boutique hotel on the city-owned lot at the corner of First and Main streets in downtown Los Altos beat out the proposal for a six-screen movie theater last week, putting to rest the tug of war between the two proposed land uses that has divided the community over recent months.

The Los Altos City Council voted 3-2 during a standing-room- only meeting June 12 to began negotiations with developer Roxy Rapp/Innkeepers Associates to build a hotel on the .78-acre site. The council required that Rapp scale the proposed project down from three stories to two, provide 75 public parking spaces and work with neighboring Safeway on possible parking expansion.

Mayor King Lear, a strong theater advocate, and Councilwoman Kris Casto opposed the hotel.

More than two dozen residents voiced their opinions to the council prior to its decision. One resident spoke in favor of the hotel. Others either supported a theater or asked the council to postpone making a decision until collecting more data or to scale down the proposed projects.

The Los Altos Chamber of Commerce and the Los Altos Village Association urged the council to postpone any decision.

The surprise decision came at point in the discussion when it appeared that the council would not be able to reach consensus and would need to table any motions.

Council members John Moss, Lou Becker and Casto defeated Lear and Councilman Francis La Poll’s votes to put a theater at the site. Casto said she wanted more public input before moving forward with any project

Becker and Moss said the theater proposal would cram too much on the site and wouldn’t generate as much city revenue as a hotel.

“It’s so totally out of scale … I don’t think you can put all of these things on one corner. I just cannot support it,” Becker said. “I support a theater somewhere else, not at that corner. A hotel would give additional parking and revenue to do other things for the city. It would be a benefit to taxpayers.”

Becker told council members that the city would make more money from the property’s current leases if they left the site alone than if they placed a theater there.

“I will not vote for a proposal that will sell the land for less than what we paid for it,” he added.

Lear made the motion to negotiate with Roxy Rapp after La Poll said the council owed it to the community to make a decision. He reminded the council that they had not yet voted for the hotel option.

The hotel proposal passed with support from La Poll, Becker and Moss.

Rapp has offered the city $3 million for the land, nearly double the amount the other developers had offered. An economic study projects that the proposed 85-room, three-story hotel will bring in $565,000 to the city annually. The theater would have brought in $50,000-$80,000 annually, according to the study.

The council did not choose an alternate plan should negotiations with Rapp fail. Council members said they will go back to the drawing board if necessary.

The council unanimously agreed to form an ad hoc committee to study other sites for a possible theater location.