After months of delays, Dan Harkham’s proposed hotel for the Pico - Robertson neighborhood went to the Los Angeles Planning Commission on November 18. Harkham and development partner Sinan Sinanian had already been planning a hotel and had already started the approvals process, when in 2019, they applied to the city to expand the project. In June 2020, the proposal went first to the South Robertson Neighborhood Council, which voted 15-4 in opposition. Nevertheless, city staff forwarded the proposal to the City Planning Commission; the June 2021 hearing was delayed to September and then to November.
By this point, the project had drawn critical media attention. In August, Knock LA talked to Harkham’s tenants to understand, of the proposed hotel, “does the community really want this amenity?” (No, was the conclusion.)
On the eve of the vote, Harkham gave a rare press interview. Maybe he assumed he would find only fawning coverage from Boiling Point, the online student newspaper of Shalhevet High School, where Harkham is an alumnus. Yet Boiling Point also spoke with tenants complaining of Harkham’s company “traumatizing us since 2016 with their threats of kicking us out.” Further, Boiling Point’s reporting highlights a discrepancy in the development proposal: while Harkham strongly implied his hotel would provide for the special needs of the Orthodox Jewish community, he refused to make a firm commitment, explaining that “everything was still up in the air.”
The November 18 hearing ran over an hour an a half. Following a staff proposal and a presentation from the applicant’s representative, there was 45 minutes of public comment. 40 minutes was in opposition — from tenants, neighbors, politicians, activists, and rabbis. After hearing from the Neighborhood Council and the City Council Office, the Commissioners then voted unanimously to reject the proposal.
The vote was first reported by Urbanize LA, which called the rejection a “rare move.” In their comments, several Commissioners noted that while they did not necessarily oppose this sort of redevelopment for this site, they opposed this particular applicant. One commissioner said she might have voted for the project if she felt the applicant had treated tenants fairly; another urged the applicant to “support community fabric” better.
Harkham had told Boiling Point that if the Planning Commission were to reject the proposal, he would “try to find another option, perhaps a hotel or another kind of opportunity.”
