Downtown Ojai’s latest resort, which can be its oldest, stands alongside Ojai Avenue like a rancher in his finest string tie and leather-based vest.
This property, now referred to as Resort El Roblar, has been a fixture on Ojai’s fundamental road for greater than a century — celebration to a number of civic dramas, one fraud conviction, repeated closures and 4 a long time of health retreats. Now, after years of negotiation and restoration, a brand new workforce of householders has reshaped the place to evoke Outdated California, rejoice the Ojai Valley’s wild facet and lure Angelenos seeking to escape the town.
“There’s a hitching submit exterior, subsequent to the bike rack,” resort associate Jeremy McBride identified, noting that horseback visits aren’t out of the query.
Resort El Roblar in Ojai has two tortoises on its grounds.
(Resort El Roblar)
In a city that’s quick on lodging provide, the Roblar stands out for its measurement, its place in native historical past and the best way it wears that historical past on its partitions. Oh, and the 2 big tortoises out again.
It went up in 1919, a mix of Spanish Revival and California Mission Revival kinds. Its 2 acres embrace 39 visitor rooms, 11 bungalows, a pool, an occasion area, a dinner restaurant (the Condor Bar) and a breakfast-and-lunch restaurant (La Cocina). It reopened this summer time with nightly charges of $455 and up.
“There are such a lot of stylish design lodges on the market, and we definitely didn’t need to do this,” stated Eric Goode, the associate with essentially the most longstanding ties to the realm. “Ojai is rustic and horsey. It’s not Montecito.”
The resort entrance is framed by an arch that echoes these in Ojai’s downtown arcade constructing. Many of the bungalows have kiva-style fireplaces. Within the Cocina breakfast-and-lunch room, the bar wall is a stack of coloured bottles mortared along with concrete like a ghost city bottle-house.
The centerpiece of the foyer is a stacked-stone fire. The partitions characteristic a wrap-around mural full of Ojai Valley natural world.
Foyer on the Resort El Roblar.
(Resort El Roblar)
The room appears to be like prefer it goes again a century. However the fire is new, rebuilt to resemble previous images. So is the mural, painted by artist Stefano Castronovo final yr.
Although Goode, 67, is finest identified elsewhere as an entrepreneur and maker of documentaries, he spent a piece of his childhood within the Ojai Valley. Whereas his father was educating on the Thacher College, Goode stated, he was “catching horned lizards and rattlesnakes and placing them in my lunchbox.”
Later, Goode created New York’s Space nightclub/artwork gallery within the Nineteen Eighties; took possession roles in a number of lodges and eating places, together with New York’s Bowery Resort; and co-founded the nonprofit Turtle Conservancy with Maurice Rodrigues. Later nonetheless, Goode produced and directed the documentary collection “Tiger King” (2020) and “Chimp Loopy” (2024).
For about 35 years, Goode stated, he has saved a house in Ojai and returned often. But for many of that point, Goode stated, “I by no means thought I’d do a enterprise right here.” The important thing, he stated, was discovering a historic property whose reopening would possibly really feel extra like a revival than a disruption to native tradition.
When Ojai and the Roblar had been born
Ojai’s Resort El Roblar features a bougainvillea-lined pool space.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Occasions)
The Roblar was born as trendy Ojai was taking form between 1917 and 1920. That’s when the city was renamed from Nordhoff to Ojai and native chief E.D. Libbey employed architects Richard Requa and Frank Mead to successfully reshape the town after a hearth.
They designed the town’s lengthy arcade alongside Ojai Avenue; its signature submit workplace and tower; a church that turned the Ojai Valley Museum; and the Roblar, all crafted with Spanish Colonial and Mission Revival options.
Whereas Ojai’s status unfold as a complicated small city with a religious bent and spectacular setting, the Roblar prospered, faltered, was renamed the Oaks, added a bar, added a pool and added bungalows. It additionally added a neon signal after which subtracted it, ultimately forsaking a lot of its unique design as homeowners and managers got here and went.
By one account, the resort’s early managers included a Mr. Canfield from Santa Barbara, adopted by Mr. Cromwell from San Francisco, each of whom dedicated suicide. Later got here Frank Keenan, a former Chicago alderman who purchased the resort in 1952 and in 1957 was convicted in Illinois of federal earnings tax evasion.
“We hope to not observe of their footsteps,” Goode stated.
The resort entered a special period in 1977, when health entrepreneur Sheila Cluff remade it as a health-oriented retreat, later passing management to her daughter, Cathy Cluff. The Oaks closed in 2017 after struggling smoke harm within the Thomas fireplace — and when the Cluff household put the property up on the market, the brand new homeowners stepped in.
New rooms, new artwork, roaming reptiles
Visitor room on the Resort El Roblar.
(Resort El Roblar)
No one will mistake El Roblar for a health retreat now. Although its pool and fitness center are more likely to get loads of use, the brand new homeowners are clearly targeted on consolation, fashion and historical past.
Moreover Goode and McBride, who has a background as an entrepreneur and filmmaker, the companions embrace designer Ramin Shamshiri and restaurateur Warner Ebbink (who co-owns the Little Dom’s eating places in Los Feliz and Carpinteria and Bar Lou in Montecito).
The sale closed in September 2019. Then the pandemic arrived. It took six years of design, allow negotiations with the town, restoration and building earlier than the resort reopened beneath its unique identify.
As a result of the the Oaks was run as a largely non-public health retreat, McBride stated, the restart of the resort means “it’s actually open to the group for the primary time in 50 years.”
The bar in La Cocina restaurant at Resort El Roblar.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Occasions)
Its dinner restaurant, the Condor Bar, led by government chef Brandon Boudet, opened July 17, serving “California Mexican” delicacies and utilizing a Santa Maria-style wood-fired grill. Work continues on the eight visitor rooms within the resort’s Sycamore constructing, scheduled to open in mid-September.
Throughout Ventura Road from the resort, the brand new homeowners have additionally purchased a property that when housed World College (which closed in 2017). Their plan nonetheless wants metropolis approval, however the resort homeowners have stated they goal to open a 9,000-square-foot spa and wellness facility “to enhance the resort” within the subsequent 18 to 24 months.
The overarching concept, McBride stated, is for the Roblar area to really feel “not like a brand new, fancy resort, however one thing that’s all the time been right here.”
The general public areas and visitor rooms are full of customized and vintage furnishings and greater than 1,000 items of artwork, a lot of them from California Auctioneers in Casitas Springs and Early California Antiques in Oxnard. The partitions of the restaurant are crowded stuffed with condor pictures and artifacts — “such as you’re having dinner in your favourite pure historical past museum,” McBride stated.
Within the walled backyard by the resort’s bungalows, two Aldabra big tortoises, Abra and Cadabra, creep between solar and shade. (They’re on mortgage from the Turtle Conservancy. For $100 per grownup, Roblar company can join a tour of the conservancy’s Ojai property, which incorporates about 500 turtles and tortoises.)
The resort’s web site notes that the property and its fireplaces, balconies and lifeguard-less pool are “designed for adults” and that “we discourage kids [as overnight guests] for security causes.” Canine beneath 60 kilos are welcome (with a $250 charge). Additionally, images and video recording “usually are not permitted in shared areas,” although a ban on selfies is perhaps troublesome to implement.
The Roblar’s charges trace on the quick provide of lodging in Ojai, which has drawn many leisure trade figures but guards its small-town character aggressively.
Two of the companions behind Ojai’s Resort El Roblar are Jeremy McBride and Eric Goode.
(Dave Allocca / Starpix for HBO)
The town has about 7,600 residents and a dozen lodges. It levies one of many state’s highest resort tax charges (15%), forbids short-term trip leases and bans chain companies with 5 or extra places. The biggest resort on the town is the 303-room Ojai Valley Inn, which has its personal golf course and summer time charges that begin round $780.
In 2022, the college board turned down a plan to transform a college district web site right into a 200-room resort. Final yr, Mayor Andy Gilman’s profitable marketing campaign known as for civil discourse and open minds, however warned of “our over-dependence on tourism.”
Parking is perhaps essentially the most controversial a part of the Roblar’s rebirth. To make room for different components, the brand new homeowners received permission to take out the resort’s public car parking zone, safe off-site parking and require that company use valet service ($50 nightly). This happy metropolis officers, however not some neighbors.
“Simply one other sickening show of LA $$$$. No actual parking,” one Ojai resident complained on Fb.
Awkward as these debates will be, McBride stated, it’s the protecting perspective of Ojai residents that has helped maintain the town’s identification in place.
“This place continues to be so particular,” he stated. “There’s a motive why people who find themselves right here need to protect it.”
