Press Room Fate Sealed as Santa Barbara City Council Denies Appeal

Downtown Pub Destined for Demolition as Proposed 66-Room Hotel Project Moves Forward

Credit: Ryan P. Cruz

The Press Room, an English-style pub and perennial soccer-watching haven that has occupied the same building on Ortega Street for nearly three decades, received a final decision on Tuesday regarding its fated demolition in favor of a 66-room, four-story hotel proposed by the SIMA Corporation. In a 5-2 decision, Santa Barbara City Council voted to deny both of the final appeals to save the property, upholding the Planning Commission’s previous approval and allowing the proposed hotel development to move forward.

It’s been a long fight for the downtown pub, whose owner, James “Raf” Rafferty, opened the bar in April 1995. After a potential housing development was proposed almost four years ago, the community rose up to try to save the establishment, and for a short time the property owner, Jim Knell of SIMA Corporation, pulled the application, seemingly giving the bar a second life in 2022.

But that was short lived, and Knell soon applied with another project, this one a 66-room hotel that stretched across the Press Room property to join with other SIMA-owned properties on the 700 block of State Street. The new hotel proposal sparked heated debate when it came across the Planning Commission in August 2023, but after kicking the project down the road, the commission approved the project a month later.

Tuesday’s appeals of the planning commission’s decision challenged the “sound community planning” of the proposal, arguing that another hotel was unnecessary given the housing crisis in the city. One of the appellants, filmmaker Gareth Kelly, showed a clip of a film he created telling the story of the bar’s David-versus-Goliath fight against SIMA, called Locals Only: The Big Little Pub.

Despite the immense public pushback, including a petition with 15,000 signatures and dozens of public comments in favor of the Press Room, the majority of the council found that the project checked all of the objective zoning boxes and could not be denied just because it was a proposed hotel.

“It’s been through the process,” said Councilmember Mike Jordan. “It’s not a situation of hotel over housing.”

Councilmember Kristen Sneddon opposed the project due to its proposed lot merger, saying that it could set a worrying precedent where developers could buy several neighboring properties with the intention of merging the parcels for a giant development. Councilmember Eric Friedman voted to deny the appeal but said that the situation just proves that “the process is broken, and we as a council need to fix it.”

“We should really address hotels and where they are appropriate,” Friedman said, proposing that the city hold a deeper discussion on a potential hotel moratorium. “We can’t keep having them pop up all over town in neighborhoods.”

The council voted 5-2 to uphold the planning commission decision, with councilmembers Sneddon and Oscar Gutierrez voting in opposition.

“It is unfortunate about The Press Room, and there’s nothing we can really say about that besides ‘We’re sorry,’ but that’s not in our control nor our purview,” Mayor Randy Rowse said.