The idea, still in very early stages of development, would aim to honor the history and architecture of the 100-year-old property.

A large, single-family home on Prospect and Cuvier streets in La Jolla may be transformed into a hotel, if a recently-submitted application to the city of San Diego is approved.

The January application, filed by Marengo Morton Architects on behalf of Maxwell Waitt, co-founder of the Orli La Jolla hotel in La Jolla, seeks development permits “for the reuse of a heritage structure and conversion of an existing 16,683 square-foot single-dwelling unit to a commercial 20-room hotel with interior remodel” at 484 Prospect St.

The project is still in “very preliminary early stages of development,” said Waitt, who is currently under contract to buy the property and “weighing the options to see what can be done with that particular location.”

The building is a heritage structure; it was constructed in 1925 as nurses’ housing for the original location of Scripps Memorial Hospital (opened on Prospect Street in 1924 and moved to Genesee Avenue in 1964) and was designed by Louis Gill, nephew of Irving J Gill.

Though not historically designated, the 0.28-acre site at 484 Prospect is an “exceptional piece of real estate,” Waitt said. “We’re just trying to figure out a way to preserve it and make it even more special than it already is.”

The building has “lived many lives,” he added, transitioning away from hospital-adjacent purposes into an office space and once proposed as a senior living facility but now a single-family home.

The structure’s placement in a zone that also contains the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, the La Jolla Recreation Center and residential buildings, combined with the limited recreational space on the property, makes the site attractive as a hotel, he said.

It’s a project he has familiarity with, as his boutique hotel Orli La Jolla, situated on Draper Avenue about a thousand feet away from the proposed hotel, was once a family home, designed in 1913 by Irving Gill, designated historic in 1983 and reimagined as a hotel in 2020 by Waitt and his sister, Hailey Waitt.  

How the city responds to the permit application (decided at a public hearing not yet scheduled) will inform how the project proceeds. A hotel, if approved, would likely be a different concept from Orli, Waitt said.

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