Downtown Ojai’s latest lodge, which can be its oldest, stands alongside Ojai Avenue like a rancher in his greatest string tie and leather-based vest.
This property, now generally known as Lodge El Roblar, has been a fixture on Ojai’s primary avenue for greater than a century — social gathering 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 staff of householders has reshaped the place to evoke Previous California, have fun the Ojai Valley’s wild facet and lure Angelenos trying to escape town.
“There’s a hitching post outside, next to the bike rack,” lodge associate Jeremy McBride identified, noting that horseback visits aren’t out of the query.
Lodge El Roblar in Ojai has two tortoises on its grounds.
(Lodge 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 way in which 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 so many trendy design hotels out there, and we certainly didn’t want to do that,” stated Eric Goode, the associate with probably the most longstanding ties to the realm. “Ojai is rustic and horsey. It’s not Montecito.”
The lodge entrance is framed by an arch that echoes these in Ojai’s downtown arcade constructing. A lot 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 hearth. The partitions function a wrap-around mural stuffed with Ojai Valley wildlife.
Foyer on the Lodge El Roblar.
(Lodge El Roblar)
The room seems to be prefer it goes again a century. However the hearth is new, rebuilt to resemble previous photographs. So is the mural, painted by artist Stefano Castronovo final 12 months.
Although Goode, 67, is greatest recognized elsewhere as an entrepreneur and maker of documentaries, he spent a piece of his childhood within the Ojai Valley. Whereas his father was instructing on the Thacher Faculty, Goode stated, he was “catching horned lizards and rattlesnakes and putting 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 Lodge; and co-founded the nonprofit Turtle Conservancy with Maurice Rodrigues. Later nonetheless, Goode produced and directed the documentary collection “Tiger King” (2020) and “Chimp Crazy” (2024).
For about 35 years, Goode stated, he has saved a house in Ojai and returned incessantly. But for many of that point, Goode stated, “I never thought I’d do a business 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 have been born 
Ojai’s Lodge El Roblar features a bougainvillea-lined pool space.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Instances)
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 town after a fireplace.
They designed town’s lengthy arcade alongside Ojai Avenue; its signature publish 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 popularity unfold as a classy small city with a non secular 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 lodge’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 lodge in 1952 and in 1957 was convicted in Illinois of federal earnings tax evasion.
“We hope not to follow in their footsteps,” Goode stated.
The lodge 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 injury 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 Lodge El Roblar.
(Lodge 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.
In addition to 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 town, restoration and building earlier than the lodge reopened below its unique identify.
As a result of the the Oaks was run as a principally non-public health retreat, McBride stated, the restart of the lodge means “it’s really open to the community for the first time in 50 years.”
The bar in La Cocina restaurant at Lodge El Roblar.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Instances)
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 lodge’s Sycamore constructing, scheduled to open in mid-September.
Throughout Ventura Road from the lodge, 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 lodge homeowners have stated they purpose to open a 9,000-square-foot spa and wellness facility “to complement the hotel” within the subsequent 18 to 24 months.
The overarching concept, McBride stated, is for the Roblar area to really feel “not like a new, fancy hotel, but something that’s always been here.”
The general public areas and visitor rooms are stuffed with 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 photos and artifacts — “like you’re having dinner in your favorite natural history museum,” McBride stated.
Within the walled backyard by the lodge’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 lodge’s web site notes that the property and its fireplaces, balconies and lifeguard-less pool are “designed for adults” and that “we discourage children [as overnight guests] for safety reasons.” Canine below 60 kilos are welcome (with a $250 price). Additionally, pictures and video recording “are not permitted in shared spaces,” although a ban on selfies is likely to be tough to implement.
The Roblar’s charges trace on the quick provide of lodging in Ojai, which has drawn many leisure business figures but guards its small-town character aggressively.
Two of the companions behind Ojai’s Lodge 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 lodge tax charges (15%), forbids short-term trip leases and bans chain companies with 5 or extra places. The biggest lodge 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 faculty district web site right into a 200-room lodge. Final 12 months, Mayor Andy Gilman’s successful marketing campaign referred to as for civil discourse and open minds, however warned of “our over-dependence on tourism.”
Parking is likely to be probably the most controversial a part of the Roblar’s rebirth. To make room for different components, the brand new homeowners acquired permission to take out the lodge’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.
“Just another sickening display of LA $$$$. No real 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 town’s id in place.
“This place is still so special,” he stated. “There’s a reason why people who are here want to preserve it.”
