Proposed hotel seen as threat to quality of life
Eight miles south of Hollister sits the quiet little community
of Tres Pinos. With a population somewhere below 800 people, this
tiny community once shaped the landscape of San Benito County as a
flourishing boom-town full of energy, life and vibrancy.
Proposed hotel seen as threat to quality of life
Eight miles south of Hollister sits the quiet little community of Tres Pinos. With a population of somewhere below 800 people, this tiny community once shaped the landscape of San Benito County as a flourishing boom-town full of energy, life and vibrancy.
Amid the grassy hills of Tres Pinos where cattle graze there is a battle brewing over a proposed hotel development that would add 44 units of rentable space to the county.
Settlers and adventurers flocked to California following statehood in 1850, due in part to the Gold Rush. Rural areas, such as Tres Pinos, were gathering spots surrounded by vast farms and ranches. San Benito County became an important hay, grain and cattle producing area. But there were very few people.
Later, in 1873, an event took place that would shape the history of the county and put Tres Pinos on the map: Southern Pacific put a railroad station there.
Doing so made Tres Pinos the trading, shipping and commerce center for hay, cattle and grain from the southern part of the county. At the time this area was known for its high quality grain production.
In the last three decades of the 19th Century, Tres Pinos was a prosperous shipping center, with a distinctive flavor of the Old West.
The town was outfitted with wooden sidewalks, store buildings with false fronts, hitching posts, and wooden watering troughs for horses. Among the businesses in downtown Tres Pinos were seven enormous grain warehouses, a scale house, six saloons, including one that was illegal, a bullfighting arena and a large hotel, as well as rumored brothels.
In 1944, the railroad discontinued its run to Tres Pinos and dismantled the station. Tres Pinos became the quiet, rural community of today, left in the shadows of Hollister. This information comes courtesy of Marjorie Pierce’s book, “East of the Gabilans.”
Today, what remains of Tres Pinos is a small town with a mini-market, four restaurants, a post office and a bar. The way of life in the town has not changed significantly in the last six decades. People still know their neighbors, watch out for one another and walk their dogs without leashes. There are still unpaved sidewalks and the occasional chicken roams wild and uncaged.
If the planning commission approves the hotel project when it comes before them later this spring, – sometime in April or May according to Chuck
Ortwein, a senior planner for the San Benito County Building and Planning Department – this will be one of the largest hotels in the county.
Business owners in Tres Pinos and San Benito County are excited about the potential for a new hotel and wine-tasting room, but some residents in Tres Pinos are fearful that the development will change their way of life.
The developers of the project are county residents John and Jae Eade.
Some 70 percent of the Tres Pinos Water District’s customers signed a petition, circulated by detractors, voicing opposition to the proposal.
Ed and Jane Schmidt are among the most vocal of the families expressing opposition to the development. Their home is located directly next to the property where the hotel is being proposed.
The Schmidts moved to Tres Pinos five years ago. At the time they purchased the house they looked at a number of other homes, but it was the quality of the school district and the quiet, rural nature of the area that brought them to Tres Pinos. They wanted a quiet neighborhood where they could raise their son, Eddie, and never leave.
“When we bought here we expected growth, but we thought it would be residential, not commercial,” Schmidt said. “Who wants to live next door to a business that is open year-round?”
At the close of the public comment period last week the San Benito County building and planning department had received 14 letters of opposition. No letters were filed in favor of the project. But not all residents are vocally against the project.
Jack Stevenson, who was at the Tres Pinos Post Office last week, said he has mixed feelings.
“The water district certainly can’t handle another hookup. It can’t handle the ones it has right now,” Stevenson said. “However, if it will bring in valuable tax dollars and increase tourism, I’m in favor of that.”
Rev. Larry Kambitsch of Immaculate Conception church in Tres Pinos expressed similar sentiments. A pastor wears several hats and represents his congregation as much as himself. His parish hasn’t been discussing the issue at the church much, but he knows it’s been talked about in the community.
“I have two feelings. On one hand I’m pro-tourism and I’d enjoy the visitors that might come to the church, but at the same time I’d kind of like to keep the town the way that it is,” Kambitsch said. “So it’s a mixed bag. I wouldn’t mind the visitors, but I think it would depend on how much traffic would be impacted.”
Business owners are mostly in favor of the proposed project. Phil Barrett, the owner of Flapjacks Country Cafe, sees the development of a new hotel as a win-win situation, since a new hotel would mean more people could come to the area to spend money and support local businesses.
Mike Howard, owner of the Tres Pinos Inn, is also a staunch supporter of the hotel project.
“The benefits of a project like this are immense. This would certainly be an increased opportunity for my business,” Howard said. “A development such as this can provide the county with a touch of class in the form of an establishment that people can be proud of.”
But residents opposed to the project correctly note that business owners most in favor of the hotel are not residents of Tres Pinos.
Regardless of resident feelings the issue comes down to zoning. Currently only one part of the property the Eades want to build on is zoned for commercial use. The rest of it is zoned for residential use. That means the first step developers will have to face is getting the county planning commission to approve a zoning change
The developers contend that since a part of the property is zoned commercial the rest of that property should be as well.
“They [residents] have more to worry about than the zoning on three acres of land,” John Eade said this week.
Opponents are concerned that guests who stay at the hotel would not respect neighboring homes and would walk back to the hotel drunk and careless. They would also have to cross a state highway where drivers speed by. There is little law enforcement in that part of the county, opponents say, to deal with drunk drivers who might drive back after a day of wine tasting. The San Benito County Sheriff’s Department handles law enforcement in Tres Pinos, but there is not a sheriff’s substation located there.
Those opposed also have concerns about parking. The hotel will have banquet facilities for weddings and special events. Residents worry the lot slated for parking will not be large enough and cars will fill neighboring streets.
Senior planner Ortwein said he is working with Eade on parking.
An issue that all parties agree on is that water is in short supply in Tres Pinos. Currently the water district has one 55,000 tank, and needs 250,000 gallons of water just for the current residents. It is grossly undersized to meet the needs of the district, according to Diane Hawkes, a former member of the Tres Pinos Water Board.
The Eades sought to solve that problem by drilling their own well on the property.
The Tres Pinos Water Board of Directors opposed the well, but the San Benito County Water district gave it the green light.
Eade also freely acknowledges that wastewater is likely to be an issue, but before sinking more money into infrastructure, he would like to get project approval. If that doesn’t come and all options are exhausted, Eade still has plans for the parcel.
“The department will either say up or down,” Eade said. “If they vote against us, we’ll go with the regular zoning we have now.”
That will mean new houses.
The Tres Pinos School District was one of the organizations that sent a letter of contention to the planning commission. In their letter, trustees expressed concerns that the proposed hotel would add significantly to the traffic volume in Tres Pinos.
Since the school is located adjacent to Hwy. 25, students are already affected by the volume of traffic on the highway and the noise the traffic generates. Additionally there are concerns about students having to cross the highway to get to school. A bike route leads from the residential area to the school, and the new hotel would share 50 yards of the bike lane with students. It is the school district’s contention that the students are being put into harm’s way since a bike/pedestrian trail is going to be used as a driveway.
The report on the project indicated the common use of the bike route by the hotel would be for emergency purposes only.
San Benito County Planning Commission Vice-Chair Mark Tognazzini had not seen the Spur Hotel agenda item, which won’t be given to the planning commissioners until about a week before the issue is due to come before them, so he was reluctant to weigh in with an opinion, but like most people in San Benito County he’d heard about the project.
“I really haven’t heard too much so far, but I’ve probably heard the same things most people around town have heard,” Tognazzini said. “I understand there is some opposition, but I don’t think it’s appropriate to talk about the project until there has been a public process. We’ll have to look at the findings and the mitigations and see where it goes from there.”
Commissioner Gordon Machado agreed.
“There hasn’t even been discussion about the project. Staff doesn’t usually deliver papers until six days before the planned meeting,” Machado said.
Still, it’s impossible to escape all knowledge of the project. Renderings of the proposed hotel have been all around Tres Pinos for ages. A poster boasting that the Spur Hotel is coming in 2007 can be seen at the Tres Pinos Inn. There was even a public forum for the project at a “town hall” meeting last fall.
“It’s funny to see a rendering of a project that hasn’t even come before the planning commission yet,” Machado said. “But I try to stay as open-minded as I can be.”
Schmidt, the resident whose land abuts with Eade’s, had planned to expand his home at some point, but he said he won’t bother if he knows he will be living next door to a hotel.
“We didn’t buy next to an airport and then expect the airport to shut down,” Schmidt said. “We bought in a residential neighborhood.”
Patrick O’Donnell can be reached at po*******@pi**********.com.
