Abbot Kinney is one step closer to getting its first hotel

Developer and movie producer Dan Abrams of Wynkoop Properties plans’ for what would be the first-ever hotel on Abbot Kinney Boulevard are chugging along, following the filing of an initial study as required under CEQA.

The Venice Place Project, formerly known as the Abbot Kinney Hotel, would include 80 rooms, four apartment units, three restaurants, retail stores and office space, Urbanize reported.

The development, at 1021-1033 and 1047-1051 Abbot Kinney Boulevard, would take up a whole block of the tourist-heavy street, between Broadway and Westminster Avenues.

Plans call for nearly 64,000 square feet of new construction. The property would consist of three buildings connected by passageways with shops and green space in an outdoor courtyard.

There are roughly 14,600 square feet of existing retail buildings on the site. Some of the tenants — the restaurants Felix, CasaLinda and a new Hal’s Bar and Grill — would remain on the property.

Abrams proposed an earlier version of the project in 2013, but neighbors quickly pushed back saying the hotel would cause increased traffic on the already congested street. That wasn’t the first time community involvement impacted a potential hotel development on Abbot Kinney. Hotel Ray was planning to open at 901 Abbot Kinney but was rejected by the West L.A. Planning Commission after much debate in 2007.

Abram’s original plan called for a four-story, 92-key luxury hotel that would have replaced Joe’s (now Felix) and Primitivo (now CasaLinda). Unlike the current multi-structure plan, it called for one large building, which neighbors called “monolithic.”

The initial study states that an Environmental Impact Report will be required.

Local architect David Hertz is designing the project, but a timeline for the development has yet to be released. [Urbanize LA] — Subrina Hudson