Over 200 Santa Monica residents are expected to oppose the massive expansion of the Miramar hotel at tonight’s City Council meeting.

Representing the 1,000+ members of the Santa Monicans Against the Miramar Expansion Coalition, the residents are expected to call on City officials to require the hotel’s developer to make substantial revisions to the design and reductions in scale to make the project compatible with the surrounding community.

The Miramar’s plan, as proposed, significantly exceeds the City’s zoning standards for height and density and is highly inconsistent with numerous provisions in the LUCE (Land Use and Circulation Elements), which was adopted by the City in July 2010 and establishes a 32-foot base height limit for all of Santa Monica. The developer has proposed building heights that are more than 400 percent above this base height limit. The project is also inconsistent with the LUCE’s stated intention that the Miramar property provide a transition from the City’s Downtown Core to adjacent residential neighborhoods.

The residents will also take issue with numerous aspects of the controversial project that would plant a massive Las Vegas-style condominium/hotel/retail project in the transitional coastal neighborhood of Santa Monica. They have also repeatedly expressed concerns about the enormous impacts of this 500,000+ square foot project (about the same size as Santa Monica Place, but on a much smaller parcel) on traffic, parking, noise, community character, and historical resources.

Under the expansion plan, the Miramar would build three new high-rise towers spanning the entire block of Ocean Avenue between Wilshire Boulevard and California Avenue that would house as many as 120 condominiums, as well as sizable new restaurants, 6500 square feet of retail on Wilshire Boulevard and a rooftop bar and pool. Coalition members oppose reducing the number of hotel rooms in order to include the million-dollar condos that comprise so much of the massing in the new plan. The best means of ensuring continued healthy hotel bed tax revenues is to maintain the number of existing hotel rooms rather than relying on unrealistic room rates that assume the Miramar will eventually achieve average rates of around $800 a night. Reducing hotel rooms and adding million-dollar condos benefits the developer’s bottom line, not the City’s.

Coalition members include residents and businesses that surround the Miramar, others who will be heavily impacted by the massive expansion and others who believe that this mega-project is at fundamental odds with the town’s unique low key beach town character and would set a bad precedent. The Coalition turned out an overflow crowd at the Planning Commission hearing in February, which was the first round in what locals have dubbed Miramargeddon.

Last week, the Coalition demanded transparency from the Miramar developer, publicly calling for the release of its revised plans. Released in response to the Coalition’s demand, the revision contained no change to the plan’s massive bulk and scale and no lessening of its significant impacts on the community.

This overdevelopment would also trigger significant traffic and parking jams throughout the area during two to three years of construction as well as the ongoing operation of the hotel after the expansion. By moving the hotel’s main entrance from Wilshire to Second Street, and adding another entrance on California Avenue, the project will shift traffic to residential streets, creating large traffic increases and spillover parking in the surrounding residential area.

The Coalition continues to call on the developer to modify its plans to comply with Santa Monica Codes, to fit the surrounding community and to reflect Santa Monica’s unique beach town character.

The Miramar is owned by Michael and Susan Dell of Texas. Their fortune is estimated at $15 billion, making them “among the richest people in the world.”