By Clarence Cromwell
After a request by the Toll House hotel to expand to a town-owned site across the street, the Town Council considered putting the property up for sale at its Oct. 7 meeting.
That doesn't mean Los Gatos Venture can undertake its proposal to build a new eastern Toll House wing across S. Santa Cruz Avenue and connect the buildings with a bridge. The town must auction off the property to the highest bidder, if it commits to selling. Before auctioning public land, a town must offer it to park districts, schools and builders of affordable housing. And any decision to sell property may be subject to initiative or referendum by Los Gatos residents.
The council's vote last Monday allocates $22,500 to have the property surveyed and appraised and to commission an economic analysis to figure out whether the hotel will be successful and benefit the town in the long run.
Town Manager Dave Knapp has said he favors more hotels because they bring more taxes to town coffers and pump up downtown business. When overnight guests pay the town's transient occupancy tax, Los Gatos gets to keep 100 percent of the money, unlike sales tax, which the town splits with the state. With an expanded hotel, the town would reap $80,000 a year in hotel taxes on 13,000 additional guests a year, according to the Toll House's figures, and the guests would go on to spend about $650,000 a year at local shops.
The property is occupied by a little-used Peerless Bus depot now.
The hotel proposes to build a 35-room, three-story addition on the land with ground-floor parking. The bridge would connect the third floors of the two wings, allowing guests to move from their rooms to hotel dining rooms and conference centers without venturing outside in bad weather.
In a June 14 letter to Los Gatos Venture, Planning Director Lee Bowman said that any building and bridge constructed at the site would have to be designed to protect views of the hills south of town and the Town Plaza up the street. Bowman proposed an underground walkway between the buildings that would be more expensive but protect views of the hills.
Councilmembers cautioned that they are only considering the sale of the land and not the hotel's expansion application at this point. Some of them signaled that they may oppose the bridge.
"I kind of gag on the concept of that pedestrian bridge," Patrick O'Laughlin said. "If there's any other alternative I'd like to hear it."
Joanne Benjamin concurred: "I've seen bridges like this, and I'm not real excited about them."
This article appeared in the Los Gatos Weekly-Times, October 16, 1996.
©1996 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved