What’s Old (West) Is New Again in Ojai

You can feel settled in pretty quickly at Ojai’s Hotel El Roblar.

The sense of place begins in the Old West-style lobby, where a pair of aged leather couches beckon near the rough-hewn stone fireplace. The Spanish Revival-style property — comprising 31 rooms in the main building and 11 one-bedroom bungalows — has been designed as an homage to Ojai itself, an artistic haven north of Los Angeles known for its “pink moment” sunsets and avocado and citrus orchards. Near the check-in desk, old photographs of the place line the hallway. Custom-made Pendleton blankets lie at the foot of every bed, woven with the words “Hotel El Roblar. Ojai, California 1919.”

“It’s Ojai’s longest-standing hotel, and it’s been around for 105 years,” says producer and entrepreneur Jeremy McBride, one of four co-owners of Hotel El Roblar, where rooms start at $495 a night. Adds fellow owner Ramin Shamshiri, one of the hotel’s designers, “It’s in the center of town, and it would be the central meeting point where everyone would go to spend time, both locals and tourists.”

But that centrality had long fallen to the wayside. For decades, the property had operated as The Oaks at Ojai, which Shamshiri explains was “a long-term-stay spa and health center. It wasn’t terribly open to the public unless you joined their program.”

Now McBride, Shamshiri and their partners, Tiger King co-creator Eric Goode (the hotel’s lead designer) and restaurateur Warner Ebbink, have returned the 2-acre property to its old California roots, reviving the original name and undertaking a painstaking restoration. They restored the white stucco archway that once fronted the street as well as the lobby’s fireplace and wood paneling. Archival research, conducted at the Ojai Valley Museum, the Warner Bros.’ studio library, Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History and the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology (a natural history museum at the University of California, Berkeley), informed the process. “When we started to do the research of exactly what it was, we found the old photography and drawings of the place and just really wanted to recapture its original glory,” says Shamshiri. “The whole property is meant to feel like it’s always been there.”

Soft-opened in June, the lushly landscaped Hotel El Roblar boasts private garden terraces for many of the rooms and outdoor garden patios for all of the bungalows; an inviting pool bedecked with sage green umbrellas and yellow-striped loungers; and two restaurants, daytime café La Cocina and Mexican restaurant Condor Bar, where must-try dishes include the duck leg carnitas and the beef cheek vampiro (a type of taco).

Hotel El Roblar is already becoming a bit of a scene. On a recent weekday, the Condor Room was humming at dinnertime: Among other glitterati, THR spotted fashion designers Anna Getty and Heidi Merrick and A-list photographer Stewart Shining at various tables. The buzz is hardly surprising given the owners’ pedigree: Shamshiri, who’s married to NBCUniversal Entertainment & Studios chairman Donna Langley, is an A-list designer who’s working on several high-end residential projects in L.A. Ebbink is the co-owner of Hollywood-beloved Little Dom’s restaurant in Los Feliz and the new Bar Lou bistro in Montecito. Goode is the NYC nightlife and restaurant impresario who co-created the famed ’80s nightclub Area and co-owns the Waverly Inn with Graydon Carter; in recent years, he’s enjoyed a second life as a successful documentary director and producer (he also created the 2024 docuseries Chimp Crazy). McBride and Goode are partners in Goode Films and produced both of his hit Netflix shows.

“It’s not every day the oldest hotel in Ojai comes up for sale,” says Goode, who is also the founder of the Turtle Conservancy, which protects endangered turtles and tortoises around the globe and operates a conservation center in Ojai. (In fact, two giant lumbering Aldabra tortoises, a vulnerable species, live on-site at Hotel El Roblar, on loan from the Turtle Conservancy.)

“I spent three indelible years as a child in Ojai in the late ’60s, where I first fell in love with the back country and the natural world,” adds Goode, whose love of fauna and flora is manifested throughout the hotel. Everywhere you look, elements of the natural world surround you, most notably references to the California condor, once widespread across North America. “By the 1980s,” says Goode, “only 22 remained, surviving in the Sespe Wilderness just behind Ojai. As the last refuge for this iconic species in North America, we felt it was deeply important to honor the condor here.” (Goode’s and McBride’s next entertainment project is, says the former, a docuseries about the “multimillion-dollar world of exotic reptile smuggling.”)

The property also reflects Ojai’s artistic DNA. In guest rooms, you’ll find vintage Ojai Music Festival posters, paintings by local artists and treasures unearthed at local estate sales.Even the wraparound mural in the hotel’s lobby nods to Ojai’s past, depicting figures such as Edward Libbey, the developer of the town’s downtown area, ceramicist Beatrice Wood and spiritual figure Jiddu Krishnamurti.

Despite the efforts to honor the town, not every local was on board with the owner’s plans. Amid municipal maneuvering to block the hotel’s plans for valet parking, it took three years to win permitting approval from the city, whose past and present celebrity residents include Jason Segel, Donald Glover, Anne Hathaway, Ellen DeGeneres and Reese Witherspoon.

There are a few elements still in the works, including a spa and the soon-to-open Sycamore House, a board-and-batten structure that will include eight additional guest rooms. The owners also have plans for music and event programming.

Within walking distance of the hotel are downtown spots like the Ojai Playhouse (recently restored by music industry impresario David Berger); popular restaurant Rory’s Place; Ojai Ice Cream (owned by producer Jonathan Berg and his wife, Kodi Kitchen Berg, and director Will Gluck and writer Trista Gladden); and the Chaparral Auditorium, where Jon Bernthal recently launched the Ojai Theatre Festival. “It’s become this great spot finally in town that you can go to as a destination and be part of a little, small community,” says McBride of the hotel. “There’s nothing really like it that exists right now.”

This story appeared in the Sept. 10 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.