Check out four of the coolest boutique inns in California’s retro motor lodge revival.
Motor lodges first sprang up in the 1950s, offering ease, affordability and the ultimate room-side parking convenience to the sudden surge of Americans hitting the highway. Low price tags still thrill today, naturally, but modern travelers are seeking more: a sense of authenticity and place and, of course, Instagram-worthy visuals.
Now those retro motor lodges are making a comeback. Hoteliers big and small are grabbing up these often down-and-out properties and bringing them back to life with midcenturymodern design elements, local artisan touches, boutique hotel-level comfort and picture-perfect pops of color.
Kimberly Walker and Mike Kyle’s first hotel project was the Granada in San Luis Obispo, where coincidentally, the term “motel” was first coined by the owner of the Milestone Mo-Tel. It was an eye-opening experience, Walker says, to renovate a long-abandoned 1920s hotel and reopen it as a boutique hotel. The duo immediately saw the potential in the Skyview Los Alamos, a rundown motel built in 1959 in the neighboring town.
“I’m attracted to properties with history, old souls with stories to tell,” Walker says. “That’s reflected in our development choices. In 1964, there were 61,000 roadside motels in America. By 2012, there were only 16,000 left. The restoration of Skyview is part of our overall goal. We are passionate about preservation and repurposing forgotten spaces and properties.”
The Granada was an abandoned 1920s hotel slated to be demolished, she says. “Skyview was a 1950s motel operating as a halfway house. Both had incredible roots but had been neglected. We were able to preserve a piece of the past, while adding to the surrounding community.”
In Santa Rosa, the 1970s-era Sandman retains many of the easy drive-up elements of a traditional motor lodge, but it’s been redone with modern amenities and upgrades, including frosé — frozen rosé wine — by the pool, in the shadow of a vintage neon sign.
“The history of motor lodges is marked by the 1950s, banana boats, big American cars and campers,” says Sandman owner Stephen Yang, whose firm also worked on the Ace in Palm Springs, a hipster haven that kickstarted a slew of copycats. “The motor lodges were really enabled by postwar euphoria in this country. Americans were proud of their country and loved to see it by car. The resurgence of the motor lodge is a confirmation that people are looking for a place that is approachable, comfortable and accessible to all. The Sandman speaks to all three.”
Larger hotel groups are getting into the game, too. Kimpton, which began the boutique hotel trend, has always been at the forefront of unique design and fun amenities. The 1960s Goodland in Goleta, just a few miles from UC Santa Barbara, is a perfect example. The former Holiday Inn offers the drive-up convenience it always had, but now it comes with cruiser bikes, Airstream pop-up events, poolside yoga and a vinyl record library.
Those details are “gentle nods back to Americana history,” says general manager Zachary Jellson.
The Goodland design team used many of those spaces to create communal pockets throughout the property. “People travel for different reasons,” he says, “but to be able to sit down and strike up a conversation with someone … that’s special.”
Artistic touches and local goods are lovely things, but a hotel’s success is always dependent on location. The 1950s Cambria Beach Lodge hits the mark. It sits directly across from Moonstone Beach and an easy Linus bike ride to Cambria’s main drag. The lodge, which is owned by the PRG Hospitality Group, reopened two years ago.
“We designed the hotel ourselves,” says coowner David Dittmer. “It is the first time we did not work with a professional designer. It was a personal project for us.”
The idea, he says, was to design “a new and improved ‘motor’ or ‘surf’ lodge. Highway 1 is one of the most beautiful stretches of highway and coast anywhere in the world, and there is a nostalgic element to these types of trips for people living in San Francisco and Los Angeles. We wanted to design a property that could take them back to the original experience in the 1950s, but with an updated design that new guests can identify with.”
At the end of the day, we still just want a comfortable, affordable place to lay our weary heads. But if there’s some luxe soap and kombucha on tap we certainly won’t complain.
“There is something very Californian about jumping in a car with your significant other or family and going surfing, hiking or wine tasting for the weekend,” Dittmer says. “That’s the way we would want to spend a weekend. No planes or trains, just an open American road and the wind in your hair! There is something very simple and wonderful about that.”