If you've done the Franceschi Park loop more than once, you already know how it ends. Up the stone stairs at the end of East Pedregosa Street, through the lower half of Franceschi Park, along Mission Ridge Road past the bust of Francesco Franceschi set into the cliffside, down past Roosevelt Elementary and the old streetcar shelter, and up the walkway into Riviera Park, past the fountains and the early 20th-century campus buildings. The Riviera Association's own printed walking route, the one it hands out to members, tells you exactly where to stop. Finish here, it says, at the five-star resort, with a bite or a drink.
That resort is El Encanto. And for the first time since it reopened after its last full renovation more than a decade ago, the destination at the end of that walk is not the same place it was when you started doing this loop.
The Sale You Already Half-Remember
El Encanto sold in July 2025 for $82.2 million. The buyers were Tinder co-founder Justin Mateen, his brother Tyler Mateen, and Garrett Cayton of Culver Capital. They bought it from Belmond, the luxury hospitality arm of LVMH, which had owned El Encanto since 2004 and closed it for a seven-year, $134 million restoration before reopening it in 2013. This was LVMH's only hotel in the United States, and the sale ended that chapter entirely.
Most people on the Riviera know that part already. What's less understood is what's actually been filed with the city since, and what that filing tells you about how the property changes for the neighborhood around it, not just for the guests staying in it.
What's Actually on the Table
The new ownership's submission to the Historic Landmarks Commission spells out a specific scope of work at the Alvarado Place property. According to the filing, the plans include:
- Two new pools and a spa
- An outdoor dining area south of the spa
- A new valet kiosk and fencing
- Removal of a tiered water feature on the existing fountain
- Replacing the Alvarado Place driveway surface from concrete to brick
- One window-to-door conversion on Building 14
- Removal of one native oak and ten non-native trees
Compare that scope to the last time this property changed hands. The 2006 to 2013 renovation was a full structural overhaul, bungalows lifted off their foundations, walls rebuilt, plumbing replaced, at a cost of $134 million over seven years. What's filed now is a $40 million plan focused on grounds, hardscape, and amenities, expected to run roughly three years, with the hotel staying open the entire time. It's a different kind of project. Less demolition, more repositioning.
The landscape work is being led by Mark Rios, the Los Angeles architect currently also working on a botanical garden connecting the Waldorf Astoria, the Beverly Hilton, and the under-construction Aman Resort into a single multi-use space called One Beverly Hills. Cayton has described the goal for El Encanto's grounds as a "mystical garden." Santa Barbara-based developer Tyrone McKillen is overseeing design and construction on site, which means at least part of the team making decisions about the property's exterior lives in this county, not just in a Los Angeles office.
The Part That Would Actually Change a Riviera Morning
The detail that matters most for anyone who lives nearby isn't the pools. It's what's reportedly being considered for the interior. Coverage from local outlets at the time of the sale noted that the new owners were weighing a private membership club and a coffee shop, potentially replacing some of the property's old conference room space. Nothing has been confirmed publicly beyond that early reporting, and the restaurant's future direction remains unannounced.
But sit with what that would mean if it happens. El Encanto has been, for its entire modern history, a place you visited on purpose. You booked a room, a dinner reservation, a spa treatment. A coffee shop is different. A coffee shop is a place you stop into because you were already walking past. If that's the direction it goes, the finish line of the Franceschi Park loop stops being a place where the Riviera Association tells you to treat yourself once in a while and starts being a place woven into an ordinary Tuesday.
Why This Renovation Sits Differently Than Most
Most hotel renovations happen somewhere you'd have to go out of your way to notice. This one sits at the literal terminus of a walking route that's been documented by the neighborhood's own association, running through Franceschi Park, past Mission Ridge Road, through the old Riviera campus grounds, and ending at El Encanto's front gate. The property isn't tucked off a frontage road reachable only by car. It's the answer to "where does the walk end" for a specific stretch of people who live within a few blocks of Grand Avenue, Franceschi Road, and Hillcrest Road.
That's also why the tree removals and the fountain changes in the filing matter more here than they would elsewhere. Franceschi Park, a few hundred feet away, was the subject of a city-commissioned master plan back in 1998, adopted by the City Council in 2004, precisely because the upper park's panoramic view of the coastline and Channel Islands is one of the things that makes this ridge worth protecting. Alden Freeman's original 1931 gift of the estate to the city ran on that same logic: this hillside's value is partly in what you can see from it. Any change to the grounds of the property sitting closest to that same ridge line gets watched more closely than a comparable project would be watched somewhere flatter and less visible.
Where Things Actually Stand Right Now
More than a year has passed since the sale closed. Guest reviews from earlier this year describe the property as being renovated "in real time," which lines up with a project designed to proceed in phases while the hotel keeps operating rather than closing for a single multi-year push. If the three-year renovation window holds, that puts a rough finish line somewhere in 2028, which means the Franceschi Park loop is likely to end at a property in some state of active work for at least another year or two.
None of that means the hotel is closed or the grounds are inaccessible. It means the terrace where the Riviera Association tells its members to stop for a drink may look different from one season to the next, the driveway off Alvarado Place will eventually be brick instead of concrete, and the fountain that's been there for years is slated to lose its tiered water feature. Small things, individually. Together, they add up to a property that's mid-transition rather than settled, sitting at the exact spot where a lot of Riviera residents already end their week.
Deborah Samuel spends a lot of her time on this hillside, tracking exactly this kind of change for clients who are watching their own homes and their own neighborhood shift around them. If you're curious what a property this visible does to the character of the streets around it, or you're thinking further down the road about what comes next for a home on the Riviera, Deborah Samuel is a straightforward person to ask.
