Rehabilitated in 2020 and located in the heart of San Luis Obispo’s Downtown Historic District, Hotel Cerro is a 65-room boutique hotel that adaptively reused two historic buildings on Garden Street. The Smith Building was repurposed as the hotel entrance, lobby and common area lounge. The Union Hardware and Plumbing Company Building was reused as guestrooms on the upper floor and houses the new Brasserie SLO on the ground floor. Through environmental review, construction documents and monitoring, Chattel worked with the project team for over a decade to retain and rehabilitate these buildings and integrate them into the larger infill development.

Identified on the City Master List of Historic Resources, the two unreinforced masonry buildings are representative of early 20th century commercial architecture, and include the Smith Building at 1123 Garden Street constructed in 1923 and the Union Hardware and Plumbing Company building at 1119 Garden Street constructed in 1912. The hotel is configured in such a way that the character of the historic buildings is celebrated at the front door and doesn’t compromise modern amenities, such as an edible garden on the roof of the new building. Hotel Cerro is adjacent to the most popular unofficial landmark, Bubblegum Alley!