It’s been more than a decade since real estate developer Barney Aldridge planned to add a hotel to The Barlow, the 12-acre market district in the Sebastopol neighborhood that he founded and of which he serves as managing partner.
However, Aldridge’s vision of making the Barlow Hotel a reality has been put on hold several times over the years, including due to a change in location and delays with the city. Now plans are moving forward.
The Barlow Hotel would have 83 guest rooms, a spa, an on-site restaurant, a rooftop bar, event space and retail stores arranged around centrally located landscaped courtyards and hidden terraces, according to John Jay, deputy planner for the city of Sebastopol, as described in the latest project plans resubmitted to the city on Aug. 2.
The hotel will be housed on the 6,500-square-foot site of Guayaki Yerba Matte, an old building that the organic beverage maker has used since 1996 but will vacate to move into smaller space, also at The Barlow, Aldridge said.
“The old building needs either a major renovation or replacement, and I don’t want to try to retrofit a hotel in that building,” Aldridge said. As it is, the building is prone to flooding because it is below the flood plain. “So the finished floor area of all the hotel rooms is 80 feet high. The flood elevation is 78 feet, so we are above that.”
Waiting for the green light
Aldridge submitted plans for the Guayaki site to the city 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, Jay said.
Kenyon Webster, who served as Sebastopol’s planning director from October 1996 until his retirement in June 2018, is advising Aldridge on the project.
“We have prepared an environmental document for the city’s review,” Webster said, along with technical information and other details.
“(The city) also had some concerns about the aesthetics of the project, as did some members of the public, although others love the design,” Webster said. Those concerns, he added, are that the hotel’s design fits with the “vibe” of the Barlow, which is industrial-agricultural.
Aldridge said he expects to get the green light by year’s end and start work next summer. The target opening date is spring 2027, he said.
Twists and turns
The Guayaki site was not the original location Aldridge had in mind for the Barlow Hotel. He said he purchased a 90-room hotel 10 years ago that was to be managed by Mill Valley-based Palisades Hospitality Group.
“Shortly after the entitlement, Michael Browne from Kosta Browne came to me and said that Kosta Browne needed more space so they could stay at Barlow long-term,” Aldridge said of the producer of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay wines.
Browne wanted to lease most of the space earmarked for the hotel, Aldridge said, so he agreed. Kosta Browne moved into the Barlow in 2013 and recently renewed the lease for another six years, he said.
Aldridge then turned his attention to the Guayaki building across the street, but Guayaki asked for a lease extension for another 10 years, he said.
“So I gave Guayaki what they wanted and said, ‘Okay, we’ll just wait and see.'”
Upswing for Sebastopol
When Aldridge first came up with the idea for the Barlow Hotel, he estimated the project would cost between $8 million and $12 million, the Business Journal reported at the time.
“Now it’s probably double,” he said.
According to Aldridge and The Barlow’s website, the Barlow Hotel contributes an estimated $2 million per year to Sebastopol’s city budget and boosts the local economy by an estimated $20 million per year through spending by hotel guests in downtown Sebastopol.
As city approvals are soon to be obtained, the hotel will no longer be managed by Palisades Hospitality but by Seattle-based Columbia Hospitality, Aldridge said.
“We could have built a hotel ten years ago. We just decided against it because we had other business opportunities that seemed more important to us,” said Aldridge. “But that’s no longer the case. I don’t see any major hurdles. I just see that we have three years of work ahead of us.”
Cheryl Sarfaty covers tourism, hospitality, healthcare, aviation and employment. You can reach her at [email protected] or 707-521-4259.
