Welcome to The Barlow Hotel
The Barlow is seeking community feedback and approval from the city for a new hotel
The vision for The Barlow Hotel is bold: 83 rooms, three open-air courtyards, a rooftop deck with a pool, meeting and retail spaces, two bars and one restaurant all packed in a 70,000 square-foot building. Added on to the project is a reimagined Morris Street overflow parking lot for The Barlow that features oak trees and a lookout onto the laguna.
According to a study conducted by The Barlow, the hotel will also bring in a projected $23.4 million or more of increased revenue to the city’s businesses, with $2 million going to the city in taxes.
The project is currently seeking community feedback on the overall look and feel of the building. On Friday, a couple months after they submitted their development application to the city, The Barlow hosted a meeting on the site of the proposed hotel to gather community input.
“Today we are looking for the public to tell us if it feels right to them,” said Sandy Reid, the landscape architect for The Barlow. “We want to know what part of this feels like The Barlow and what doesn’t. We are hoping to get reactions, like I would love for people to say, ‘I hate this part of it!’ That would be very helpful to us.”
City officials have already done as much, expressing discontent at what they called a “southwestern” exterior look, based on the preliminary drawings for the hotel. They feel it is a vibe that doesn’t mesh with the current aesthetic of The Barlow.
The Barlow would be demolishing a building that currently houses offices and warehouses for four businesses, including the Victorian Farmstead Meat Company and the very low-key headquarters of the nationwide Guayaki Yerba Mate brand, to build the hotel.
The parking situation, already a challenge for The Barlow on busy weekends, would be pushed to the brink by the influx of visitors to the hotel. To solve this, The Barlow has proposed a 241-spot revamped valet and employee parking lot off of Morris Street that Reid said “will feel like you are going to a campsite, really.”
“We want the parking lot to feel less like a shopping center and more like a national park,” said Reid.
As for the building itself, design architect Clint Carlton said “the grand vision is to tie everything into the surrounding area and bring the outside in.”
As for the rooftop which will lookout onto the whole city, “the vibe will be relaxed, serene, even spa-like,” said Carlton.
The hotel’s main entrance is slotted to be across the parking lot from Community Market, with other entrances being planned on McKinley Street and Sebastopol Avenue. Upon entering, visitors will be immersed in a sizable public, open-air courtyard that leads to the hotel lobby, elevators, the bar or the restaurant.
The first floor will feature two other courtyards, which guests staying on the second and third floors of the hotels will look down upon. There will also be a couple of breakout rooms, a gym and a spa, and on the rooftop there is a pool with a private bar just for those staying at the hotel.
Before the project can move forward, it needs to be approved by the city’s planning commission and design review board.
Barney Aldridge, the managing partner of The Barlow, hopes that the project is green lit by the end of the year so they can start building by the middle of 2025.
He doesn’t foresee construction being too obnoxious.
“We care very much about whatever negative impacts the construction would have since it would be affecting our businesses,” said Aldridge.
Moreover, Aldridge is excited about the opportunity to build something that he believes is a long time coming for the city.
“Overall we are doing this to benefit the entire town,” he said. “The people of Sebastopol have never had a nice hotel to welcome visitors. This will attract people in a very unique and elegant way.”
More information on the proposed project can be found here on the city website. To give input or ask a question, you can contact The Barlow.
Sounds like a great hotel to facilitate more visitors to spend more money..., but, is that what we want? We live here because it is a beautiful place to live. Many of us came from larger, more densely populated areas. Yet, here we go making it more like the places we escaped from. When noise, pollution, traffic and rents increase, where will we go next? Where is the next place we will ruin? It seems, to me at least, that the human race allows greed to rule and common sense to disappear.
Lowest initial cost or building sophistication for the future: The Barlow owns the land beneath their property and could put parking in multi levels instead of horizontal on the surface. Even cut-and-cover with a park above. Why always the cheap and easy?
The surface area used for parking would be lost as a future location for business that could bring revenue to Sebastopol. The city would be subsidizing The Barlow by that lost revenue.
The same idea applies to the city owned land used for parking by Hopmonk. Put parking beneath revenue generation or park beautification.
Another thought, it takes money to make money, so the saying goes, and like poor people with fewer choices, our poverty stricken village (that sort of wants to be a town) aims at cheapest initial cost seemingly on all choices. Is long term thinking an unaffordable luxury? Think BIGGER.