March 22, 2013 -- Renowned architect Frank Gehry's first project in his hometown in more than two decades was greeted Thursday night with mixed reactions, ranging from star-struck admirers lauding the proposed 22-story hotel Downtown to residents concerned that the project was far too tall for Santa Monica.

In the first of what promises to be many public meetings, dozens of Santa Monica residents crowded into the Main Branch Library's Multi-Purpose Room for a chance to ask Gehry and property owner Jeff Worthe about the 125-room, 244-foot hotel and condo tower that they propose to build at the corner of Santa Monica Boulevard and Ocean Avenue. ("New Gehry Building Planned in Downtown Santa Monica," March 2013)

“This is not a finished building,” Gehry told the standing-room-only crowd Thursday night. “We are not all done, especially the ground-floor stuff.”

The majority of Thursday's meeting consisted of a question and answer session with the architect and Worthe, an opportunity that many speakers took to vet their concerns over the project's height.

One resident received applause when he pointedly asked about the possibility of designing a four-story building instead of the proposed project, while another resident said that she was worried about the “Manhattan-ization” of Downtown Santa Monica.

“We expected height to be an issue,” Gehry told The Lookout Thursday. “We tried to mitigate those concerns.”

“Frankly, no one's asked me to build one of those boxy buildings,” he said.

When a member of the audience asked whether Gehry would consider a four story project instead, he said, “It's pretty difficult to do something with that profile.”

At the presentation, Worthe pointed out that the 244- tower is located toward the middle of the property at Ocean Avenue and Santa Monica Boulevard and that it would be surrounded by ground-floor retail space ranging from two to four stories tall to give the property a human-scale feel.

Worthe also noted that the height is concentrated on 12 percent of the two-acre parcel.

Still, several residents brought up the Fairmont Miramar redevelopment project. Though unrelated to the Gehry project, the current Miramar plan would place a 261-foot, 21-story tower less than half a mile from the Gehry project. To the south at Colorado Avenue and Second Street, the Wyndham hotel (formerly the Holiday Inn) is set to propose a 195-foot tower.

Though many were concerned about the height, some turned out to laud the architect's first project in over two decades in the town he has called home since the early 1970s.

Architect Hank Koning, who had served on the Planning Commission for more than eight years, applauded the project.

He added that it fits right in with the City's plan to concentration height in Santa Monica at certain location, identified as “opportunity sites.”

Though the Land Use and Circulation Element (LUCE) sets height limits for 94 percent of Santa Monica, it defers height limits to the specific plans currently being drafted for the Bergamot Area and Downtown Santa Monica.

Within those plans, certain sites are designed to have flexible limits on height that would be addressed on a case-by-case basis.

“The idea of opportunity sites seemed brilliant to me,” Gehry told the crowd. “As long as you stick to the game plan, as long as you place them well, you can have your cake and eat it.”

The Gehry project would also have 460 subterranean parking spaces and would turn two landmark houses next to the tower into a 36,000 square foot museum campus with underground gallery space. Worthe also confirmed that it would be a union hotel.

Worthe said that there will be many more meetings where residents can voice their concerns before the plans go for an initial float-up before the Planning Commission later this year.

“If the community doesn't want this, it's not going to happen,” Worthe said.

Thursday's meeting, which was attended by Council members Bob Holbrook and Kevin McKeown, was the first developer-run community meeting for a major project since the City recently realigned the community input process.

With City Staff facing an unprecedented 35 development agreements in the pipeline, the City Council took steps in January to help ease their workload.

One of those steps was to make developers -- instead of Staff -- responsible for organizing and running community input meetings on proposed projects.