California’s ‘Danish capital of America’ locked in brutal warfare over ‘gulag’ resort plans

Something’s rotten within the state of Little Denmark.

The quaint California vacationer city of Solvang is in a serious snit over a controversial glamping resort proposal from a developer that’s in court docket with the city over one other disputed resort undertaking — with new particulars rising from contained in the battle towards what one member of the Scandinavian-ish city’s steering committee decried as a “gulag” within the making.

The dust-up kicked off within the self-described “Danish Capital of America” again on Aug. 20 — when the Solvang Design Review Committee, which ensures the city maintains its storybook character, convened to weigh in on a pre-application for Ed St. George’s potential “glamping” and outside transient resort with 31 shiny silver Airstream campers, proposed for a roughly 2.19-acre downtown-adjacent website.

St. George has already stirred up loads of controversy on the Central Coast lately — snapping up a number of properties after transferring to the world in the course of the pandemic. He’s most notable for stirring the proverbial pot together with his buy of beloved vacationer attraction Pea Soup Andersen’s on Highway 101 in Buellton, slated to be torn down in favor of a luxurious condominium undertaking.

Solvang particularly has had appreciable beef with St. George, too, which could possibly be one purpose why his newest proposal was met with such explicit ire — his downtown resort undertaking, the 1704 Mission Hotel and Cottages, was slapped with a cease work order over desired design modifications, main St. George to file a lawsuit towards the town, SFGATE reported earlier.

A evaluate of a recording of the assembly revealed that a lot of the anger centered round a weird “lookout tower” deliberate for the glamping resort website — which might probably permit transient friends to spy on the encircling neighborhood.

“The tower, you could call it Jellystone Park, or you could call it a gulag,” Committee member Melissa Bates spat. “Either way, it’s gotta go.”

The website additionally occurs to fall inside the metropolis’s Mission Design District, the place all improvement is predicted to include Spanish Colonial Revival structure, to go with the town’s historic Old Mission Santa Ines.

City workers flatly directed St. George’s workforce to do higher on the compliance entrance — whereas residents lined up within the assembly to share their very own considerations.

Resident Susan Belloni questioned precisely how the distinctly mid-century campers belonged inside the district.

“I don’t see that 31 mid-century design shiny aluminum Airstream trailers have anything in common with Spanish Colonial Revival architecture,” she mentioned.

“If it looks like a trailer park and it gleams like a trailer park, in spite of the categorization of a lodging, it’s a trailer park,” Dennis Beebe mentioned throughout public remark on the assembly — a remark that made headlines within the instant aftermath of the Danish skirmish.

The plan isn’t useless, based on officers — simply not prepared for check-in. The developer was advised to revise the plans and return for a second pre-application evaluate — an uncommon extra step.