WEST HOLLYWOOD, Calif. — The infamous San Vicente Inn here, long operated as a clothing-optional, men-only motel with a just-smoke-it drug policy, in many ways epitomizes this city’s past as a live-and-let-live gay ghetto.
It also sums up West Hollywood’s rapidly gentrifying, more inclusive future. A new owner, the boutique hotelier Jeff Klein, plans to spend $30 million to transform the 29-room motel into a high-end auberge. Straight people welcome.
But what about WeHo’s transitioning present? The San Vicente , a collection of quaint cottages around a pool and garden, has an answer for that, too.
Mr. Klein, 43, bought the property last summer and faces a year of chasing down city approvals and permits for his overhaul. In the meantime, he has quietly turned the place into what he calls a “pop-up hotel,” a concept he gleefully describes as a twist on shabby chic — a midway point between the sick shabby of before (rooms lit by the blue glow of crystal meth torches) and the super-chic he has planned (breezy poolside suites stocked with Malin & Goetz soaps).
“At first, I just planned to keep it running how it was, which was basically a gay bathhouse, and then close for the refurbishment,” Mr. Klein said during a recent tour. “But then there was a near overdose. Seriously! It was like land of the missing teeth in here. I couldn’t bear it.”
He also started to fret that the San Vicente could taint his other businesses, in particular his celebrity-filled Sunset Tower Hotel up the street. The Hollywood Reporter’s society columnist, for instance, incorrectly reported that Tom Cruise had been spotted at the San Vicente when he had actually been at the Sunset Tower.
“Tom Cruise was not roaming around a gay hotel,” Mr. Klein said. “How embarrassing.”
Mr. Klein decided he had two options. He could close the inn, let it sit idle during the permitting process — which is taking longer than he anticipated, largely because the city considers the motel historic — and then keep it shuttered for another year during construction. Or he could make enough improvements to keep it open temporarily under a higher standard.
But his accountant couldn’t make the temporary numbers work. Even with slightly higher rates (for spring, $79 to $169 a night with a $10 daily resort fee, up from $69 to $139 and no fee), the enhancements option would lose Mr. Klein money. And why invest in an upgrade only to tear it all out after a few months?
“In the end, I decided to take the financial hit and have some fun,” Mr. Klein said. “I couldn’t live with myself the other way. It was sickening me.”
Over the last two months Mr. Klein has spent $300,000 on mattresses, linens, televisions and carpeting. Rooms have been spackled and painted; broken bathroom tiles have been replaced. (The eight-nozzle showers remain. Ahem.) The inn’s quiet courtyard, where a rectangular pool stretches between wisteria-draped trellises, has been planted with $30,000 worth of palms and flowers.
“I have cushions coming for those deck chairs that are really chic,” Mr. Klein said, pointing to a breakfast nook. He turned to his front desk agent, Corey Spears, and noted that employees now wear uniforms — khakis and tucked-in white polos — and serve a breakfast of chocolate croissants and fruit. (Out: staph infections. In: cute staff.) “How soon will we be able to open the new cabana?” Mr. Klein asked.
Most notably, Mr. Klein ended the clothing-optional policy and stopped advertising the place as gay-friendly. He also closed a particularly sordid hot tub area and ousted a drug-dealing squatter.
“We have a baby staying here now,” he said, beaming. Occupancy has shot up so much that he may just break even on the improvements, he said. Mr. Klein said he paid just under $11 million for the San Vicente and two nearby properties, including — bizarrely — a drug and alcohol rehabilitation center; the previous owner insisted on selling the assets as a group. The rehab, Klean Treatment , will continue operating independently.
The more-inclusive San Vicente mirrors an evolution in West Hollywood, where life has steadily drifted toward the mainstream as homosexuality has become more socially accepted. The San Vicente was the city’s last clothing-optional motel. The last lesbian bar, the Palms, was torn down last year. West Hollywood, incorporated in 1984 as “America’s first gay city,” recently removed a rainbow flag from city hall.
“It’s not just a city of gay men,” John Duran, a WeHo councilman, told The Los Angeles Times this month. “It belongs to heterosexual people as well.”
But just as West Hollywood’s shift toward a more condo-ified future has been controversial — the flag removal outraged some gay residents — Mr. Klein’s changes at the San Vicente have not been universally applauded. Fans of the old Phallus Palace, as some locals call the San Vicente, have slammed him for ending nudity and welcoming heterosexual guests.
“Leave it to the straights to destroy a place,” Richard B. wrote in a harsh Yelp review on Feb. 7 that criticized the presence of “breeders.”
Others saw the old San Vicente as something of a landmark: It may have wafted bleach and shame, but that foamy Jacuzzi should have been preserved, darn it.
“The SV Inn is one of the last remnants of the previous West Hollywood that was joyously profane, sex-obsessed and party hearty,” a commenter using the name Konacafe wrote on Curbed LA , a real estate blog, adding, “The druggie nudies at the SV Inn made it possible to do many of the things we take for granted now.”
Mr. Klein, who is married to the movie and TV producer John Goldwyn, said the criticism struck him as cuckoo. “Gay people have spent forever fighting to be included in society, and now I’m being persecuted for including straight people?” he said. “It’s so beyond creepy.”
Paul Arevalo, West Hollywood’s city manager, said the community as a whole “couldn’t be happier” with Mr. Klein’s top-to-bottom renovation and expansion plans, which include adding a restaurant, a bar, a yoga studio and a bigger pool. “It’s a property that is important to our city because it’s historic and because it’s located in the heart of our gay district, which is an important economic engine,” he said.
Although it wasn’t a “sin bin,” as a West Hollywood community news website recently referred to the San Vicente, Mr. Klein’s Sunset Tower Hotel was a rundown mess when he bought it 10 years ago, Mr. Arevalo said. Since then, the Sunset Tower, with its sophisticated restaurant and lovably eccentric maître d’hôtel , has become an enduring Hollywood hot spot.
“You’re looking at a changing culture, and West Hollywood is evolving, too,” Mr. Arevalo said. “Jeff’s plans really fit well.”
