Backers of B & B Drop Council Appeal

The backers of a proposed Ojai bed and breakfast withdrew an appeal just before the City Council was due to consider the request earlier this week.

After neighbors objected to the proposal, city staff recommended that the council not permit the five-room Valley View Inn to open on a 12-acre site atop narrow Signal Street. The Ojai Planning Commission had voted in November against allowing the business to open.

“It seems that the neighbors who were against it have, in effect, prevailed,” Planning Director Bill Prince said. “They [the proposed innkeepers] are considering resubmitting with a project description that would include a conservation easement . . . that would in perpetuity grant a chunk of the land [to remain] in open space as kind of a mitigation for the neighbors’ concerns.”

Three planning commissioners had suggested such a tactic, given that the property owners could theoretically build five other homes on the land.