Sebastopol’s The Barlow Hotel moves closer to becoming a reality

It’s been more than a decade since real estate developer Barney Aldridge planned to add a hotel to The Barlow, the 12-acre outdoor market district in Sebastopol he founded and where he serves as managing partner.

Aldridge’s vision to bring The Barlow Hotel to fruition, however, has stalled a few times over the years for reasons that include a site change and delays with the city. Now, the proposed plans are moving forward.

The Barlow Hotel is set to have 83 guest rooms, a spa, on-site restaurant, rooftop bar, event space and retail, organized around centrally located landscaped courtyards and tucked-away patios, as described in the latest project plans resubmitted to the city Aug. 2, according to John Jay, associate planner for the city of Sebastopol.

The hotel will be housed at the 70,000-square-foot Guayaki Yerba Mate site, an aged building the organic-beverage maker has occupied since 1996, but will vacate to move into a smaller space, still at The Barlow, Aldridge said.

“That old building either needs a major retrofit or needs to be replaced, and I don’t want to try to retrofit a hotel into that building,” Aldridge said. As it stands, the building is at risk for flooding because it sits below the flood plain. “So, the finished floor of all the hotel rooms is 80 feet. The flood height is 78 feet, so we're above it.”

Waiting for the green light

Aldridge submitted plans to the city for the Guayaki site in May 2022, but withdrew the application after delays, according to The Barlow’s website. The plans were revised and resubmitted in May of this year, then again earlier this month after the city requested more details, according to Jay.

Kenyon Webster, who served as Sebastopol’s planning director from October 1996 until his June 2018 retirement, is consulting with Aldridge on the project.

“We have prepared an environmental document for the city's consideration,” Webster said, as well as engineering information and other details.

“(The city) also had some concerns about the aesthetics of the project, which some members of the public also did, although others love the design,” Webster said. Those concerns, he added, are that the hotel’s design matches The Barlow’s “vibe,” which is industrial-ag.

Aldridge said he expects to get the go-ahead by year’s end and work to get underway next summer. The targeted opening date is spring 2027, he said.

Twists and turns

The Guayaki site wasn’t the original location Aldridge had in mind for The Barlow Hotel. He said he’d gotten a 90-room hotel entitled 10 years ago, with Mill Valley-based Palisades Hospitality Group to manage it.

“Shortly after the entitlement, Michael Browne of Kosta Browne came to me and said that in order for Kosta Browne to stay in The Barlow long term, they needed more space,” Aldridge said, of the producer of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay wines.

Browne wanted to lease the majority of the space that had been designated for the hotel, Aldridge said, so he agreed. Kosta Browne moved into The Barlow in 2013, and recently renewed its lease for another six years, he said.

Aldridge then set his sights on the Guayaki building across the street, but Guayaki asked to extend its lease another 10 years, he said.

“So, I gave Guayaki what they wanted, and I said, ‘Well, we'll just wait.’”

Boost for Sebastopol

When Aldridge first conceived of the idea for The Barlow Hotel, he estimated the project would cost somewhere between $8 million and $12 million, the Business Journal reported at the time.

“It’s probably double that now,” he said.

The Barlow Hotel is estimated to contribute $2 million a year to Sebastopol’s city budget, and boost the local economy by an estimated $20 million annually in hotel guest spending in downtown Sebastopol, according to Aldridge and The Barlow’s website.

As he gets closer to securing city approvals to move forward, it will not be Palisades Hospitality managing the hotel, but rather Seattle-based Columbia Hospitality, Aldridge said.

“We could have built a hotel 10 years ago. We just chose not to because we had different business opportunities that we decided were more important,” Aldridge said. “But that's not the case now. I don't see any big hurdles. I just see that we have three years of work to do.”

Full article on North Bay Business Journal.