West Hollywood : Hotel Developer Complies

Criticized for missing a March 1 deadline, Ashkenazy Enterprises Inc. last week complied with a first step in an agreement with the city of West Hollywood allowing the company to convert four apartment buildings to hotels.

Mark Winogrond, the city’s community development director, said this week that the company applied for conditional-use permits for each of the buildings on March 30.

In exchange for being allowed to convert the buildings to hotels, the company promised to pay the city $4.9 million over the next 20 years, including $1.2 million in delinquent hotel occupancy taxes and penalties.

Angry neighbors of the buildings have objected to what they say is a commercial intrusion into their residential neighborhoods and have denounced the settlement as a “sellout.”

Opponents, upset that the company failed to apply for the permits by March 1, as the settlement stipulated, had asked the City Council to nullify it.

Although Councilman Paul Koretz said last week he favors considering whether to overturn the settlement, other council members have expressed little enthusiasm for doing so. The matter was not discussed at a meeting of the City Council on Monday.