By Linda Taaffe

Mayor’s motion for hotel baffles Los Altos residents

he Los Altos City Council’s decision to move forward with a hotel on the corner of First and Main streets earlier this month left many in the community scratching their heads, including developer Roxy Rapp, who is slated to build a boutique hotel on the site.

Rapp said he wasn’t surprised by the council’s decision, but rather how the decision unfolded.

Just when it appeared that the council would postpone any decision, Mayor King Lear, who had been a strong theater proponent, made a motion to begin negotiations with Roxy Rapp to develop a hotel on the site.

Councilman Francis LaPoll, who had previously voted with Lear in favor of a theater, switched, joining Council members Lou Becker and John Moss to pass the motion. Lear then voted against his own motion along with Councilwoman Kris Casto.

“I could see that people wanted to make a decision,” Lear said. “I wanted to give them an opportunity to vote on it … I knew two favored a hotel, two favored a theater and one was not ready to make a decision. I did not know what would come out of it.”

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

Rapp moves forward with ‘Apricot Inn’

By Linda Taaffe

Palo Alto developer Roxy Rapp said last week he is optimistic that Los Altos will see its first downtown hotel on the corner of First and Main streets sooner rather than later.

Rapp has already met with officials from neighboring Safeway to begin hammering out plans to expand parking to 200 spaces on the adjacent lot and was scheduled to meet with city planners this week to scale down his initial proposal for an 85-room hotel, called Apricot Inn.

Rapp’s proposal to place a three-story boutique hotel on the city-owned lot beat out a proposal for a six-screen movie theater earlier this month, putting to rest the tug of war between the two proposed land uses that have divided the community over recent months.

The Los Altos City Council voted 3-2 on June 12 to began negotiations with Rapp to build a hotel on the .78-acre site. The council required that Rapp scale the proposed project down from three stories to two.

Rapp said he intends to build a hotel that would be within the city’s 35-foot height ordinance, a height that would be able to accommodate a third story, according to Rapp.

“I don’t want to do a box there,” he said. Rapp said a three-story building would allow him more flexibility to design a building that would blend into downtown’s village atmopshere.

The third-story would be set back, making the hotel appear to be a two-story building, he added.

Rapp, a Palo Alto native, has developed several multi-story buildings in downtown Palo Alto. His work earned him the Gold Nugget Award of Merit, PaloAlto’s1999 Gold Star Award and First Place for Commercial landscaping in the State of California by CLCA.

Before launching his career as a developer, Rapp spent 30 years in retail. He started the 68-store chain Athletic Shoe Factory.

Rapp plans to call the Los Altos hotel the Apricot Inn because, as a boy, he picked apricots with his friend along San Antonio Road in Los Altos.