Marriott Project Could Hinge on Landmark Status

In 1935, inventor Waldo Waterman relocated his aviation manufacturing business from Venice into a "very handsome building" at the corner of Fifth Street and Colorado Boulevard in downtown Santa Monica.

It's where Waterman claimed to have developed the first aircraft assembly line in the United States. Whether it was the space where he built his flying car, however, is still up for debate, at least among local historians. They have raised the issue at least once in the past several years and haven't been able to come to a conclusion.

A developer is now seeking to construct a 136-room Marriott hotel there— there's a Midas inside there now—but has said he will back out if city officials decide that the space where Waterman ran his business should be designated a historical landmark.

“If one or more of the buildings were required to be left intact in its current state, it would require us to abandon the project,” Taylor Callaham of OTO Development said at a Planning Commission meeting Dec. 14, 2011.  

The Landmarks Commission will meet this month to review a historic assessment it requested in December and decide whether to go forward with nominating the building for landmark status.

“We have no interest in stopping any project, or stopping development,” said Landmarks Commissioner Nina Fresco. “This is not an anti-development move."

• Related: Planners Blast Look of Proposed Hotels

Waterman’s flying car was called the Arrowbile. It operated with a propeller in the air and wheels on the ground. It was supposed to be fabricated at a low cost to sell to the “everyman,” but it was never actually manufactured commercially, though the Studebaker Co. did order five of them, two of which traveled successfully to the National Air Races in Cleveland in 1937.

When in 2007 the property owner applied to demolish the building where Waterman once ran W.D. Waterman Aircraft Manufacturing Co., the then-Landmarks Commission was required to review the structure’s historical significance because it was more than 40 years old.

Commissioners concluded that the buildings appeared “to rise to the threshold of significance for landmark designation due to its historical importance in association with aviator, Walter (Waldo) Waterman.”

But the designation was never bestowed. The building’s owner disputed the accuracy of the assessment, and it was suggested that the Arrowbile was actually built at Waterman’s home at 345 Amalfi Drive, on the border of Santa Monica and Pacific Palisades, Fresco said.

Fresco said that after the 2007 review, that assessment didn’t sit right with her, because it was in the building owner’s interest to debunk the historical assessment so it could sell the property; a landmark status could have hindered that goal.

“When this new hotel proposal came online and went public, I started getting all those emails again that this was an important place,” Fresco said.

So, she said, she reviewed the property at 345 Amalfi Drive where Waterman had constructed a replica and discovered that the residence wasn’t built until 1947, nearly 10 years after the Arrowbile had been built.

Michael Gallen, OTO's director of development, said he had reviewed the original assessment but did not see any reason the building's historical significance should come under review again.

“Why would the project become a landmark if it wasn’t a landmark three years ago?” he asked.

The developer plans to attend the Landmarks Commission meeting Feb. 13 and to later present his proposal to build the Courtyard to the City Council in the coming months.