If all goes well, by early 2007 there will be a new two-story,
44-room boutique hotel with a conference center called The Spur
open on the corner of Southside Road and Highway 25 in Tres
Pinos
– in our minds, a welcome addition to the sleepy little
hamlet.
If all goes well, by early 2007 there will be a new two-story, 44-room boutique hotel with a conference center called The Spur open on the corner of Southside Road and Highway 25 in Tres Pinos – in our minds, a welcome addition to the sleepy little hamlet.
With its proximity to our fine local wineries and the fact that it lies on the road to the Pinnacles National Monument, Tres Pinos has a chance to become the gateway for visitors, and it’s a perfect town to play host to a boutique tourism boon. A hotel is exactly what the area needs to serve visitors who would be interested in such activities.
“It looks great. We need more lodging in San Benito County,” said Frank Leal, the owner of Leal Vineyards and the popular Cantina Grill in Tres Pinos. “Now we can go from day trippers to weekend trippers.”
That should be the goal of our leaders looking for ways to draw money into San Benito County.
But of course nothing comes easy. Though several Tres Pinos businesses support the hotel plan, the proposal has some residents upset. They say that it would add traffic to an already dangerous intersection and that the Tres Pinos Water District does not have the infrastructure to support the new business.
Those are valid points, but they are also concerns that can, and should, be mitigated so this project can move forward. In fact, John and Jae Eade, who are proposing the hotel, have offered to give the water district $100,000 to help improve the water system, though it is not enough to cover the entire upgrade.
But if we are trying to promote ag tourism – something on the minds of those looking at the long-term economic future of our county – our leaders need to find ways to embrace beneficial projects like this one. This hotel proposal is the first shot at achieving the goal of developing ag tourism in our county and could transform Tres Pinos into a quaint little town that is a hub for wine tasting, hiking and golfing in South County. In fact, we’d like San Benito County Supervisors to ensure that this hotel project is well-designed and attractive so it can become a model for future development in Tres Pinos that would further that goal.
So study the problems. There are solutions. Let’s make this project work. San Benito County will be better for it.
