No ‘Permanent Happy Hour’ : Del Mar Council Rejects 500-Room Hotel Proposal

DEL MAR —  City officials turned down what one resident termed “a permanent happy hour” for residents Monday night when they decided to drop further negotiations with millionaire James E. Smith over construction of a 500-room hotel on a 20-acre hillside tract overlooking the Del Mar Race Track and San Dieguito Lagoon.

Smith had offered to finance two citywide advisory votes for $10,000 to determine whether Del Mar residents approved of his hotel proposal and, if so, what sort of design they preferred.

As part of his proposal, Smith offered Del Mar’s registered voters, in perpetuity, a 50% discount on rooms, food and beverages at his hotel.

After several Del Mar residents protested Smith’s plans and called his discount offer “a bribe” to ensure that Del Mar residents would vote for the hotel, the City Council voted 3-1 to abandon discussions with Smith.

Acting Mayor Arlene Carsten summed up Smith’s options as the same as those of every other Del Mar resident. “He can circulate petitions, and, if he gets enough signatures, he can put the matter to a vote.” The city would then have to pay for the advisory vote.

She also pointed out that Smith can develop his property into one-acre residential lots under its current zoning and can go before the city Planning Commission for development approval.

Smith said he is disappointed that the city didn’t allow him to poll the residents to find out whether they wanted a hotel and the estimated $750,000 a year in revenues it would add to city coffers.

“But I’m not about to go through a process of getting signatures for a referendum,” Smith said. “And I don’t know of anyone who is.”

Smith, however, has not dropped the hotel idea entirely.

“Maybe I’ll just wait a couple of years and see what happens,” he said Tuesday. “Or maybe I’ll think of some other way to find out what the people of Del Mar think about a hotel. If they don’t want a hotel, then I don’t want a hotel either. I just want a vote on it.”

Harvey Furgatch of Del Mar congratulated the council members for having turned down Monday night Smith’s proposal for a privately financed election and banishing the specter “of a permanent happy hour for the whole town” if Smith had made good on his offer of half-price drinks for Del Mar voters when the hotel was built.