BY ADRIANA HERNANDEZ
Daily Post Staff Writer
After 70 years of operation, the family-owned Country Inn Motel in Palo Alto will close Aug. 11, making way for a new 29-unit townhouse development.
The business at 4345 El Camino Real, managed by siblings Linda Maher, Jim Gretz, Laurie Tinker and Julie Macey for over 30 years, will close on Aug. 11.
“A lot of people don’t like the big hotels,” Maher said. “They like something a little more quaint and they get more special attention here.”
The closure of the motel is the end of an era for the family. The motel was built by their Italian immigrant grandparents, Clotilda Rosano Cesano and Gerolomo Cesano, in 1953.
Their mother, Rena Gretz, now 94, and Rosano Cesano managed guests, all while Gretz attended college. The motel was later passed on to Gretz and her brother Jim Cesano.
At the time, the motel was surrounded by orchards. The four siblings recalled picking fruit from the orchards and selling it in front of the motel.
“Two dollars a box for apricots or peaches or cherries,” Tinker said.
“But then we would also bring some to (Rosano Cesano) and she would can everything.”
Jim Gretz said he remembers Rosano Cesano making big Italian meals for all the guests. Tinker said she vividly remembers Rosano Cesano rolling out dough on the kitchen counter to make homemade ravioli. Now all the recipes for family dishes are in a cookbook.
Tinker remembers the day they caught a jack rabbit in the orchard and brought it back as a pet. That day, Rosano Cesano was making chicken stew.
When the four went to look for their pet rabbit, it was gone. Their grandma had cooked the rabbit and said it was chicken.
The siblings say they are bracing for the moment when fences go up around the motel in preparation for its demolition.
The motel will become a new 29-unit, three-story townhouse development, according to city spokeswoman Meghan Horrigan-Taylor.
In 2024, developer SummerHill Homes submitted a proposal to the city to build 29 three-story townhouses in five new buildings, replacing the motel, according to Horrigan-Taylor.
In 2022, during discussions about the city’s Housing Element — which mandates zoning for new homes across California — Palo Alto officials proposed replacing the motel with housing.
Planning Director Jonathan Lait proposed demolishing smaller hotels and replacing them with housing, such as the Country Inn Motel and Creekside Inn, located at 3400 El Camino Real.
The proposals showed that apartments are more profitable for developers in Palo Alto than hotels, but the loss of a hotel means less tax revenue for the city, Mayor Pat Burt said at the time. The city levies a 15.5% tax on hotel room rentals.
The family business was hit with a lawsuit in 2018 claiming it failed to comply with disability accessibility requirements.
Scott Johnson, a quadriplegic attorney who has sued hundreds of California businesses over disability access violations, filed a lawsuit against the County Inn Motel.
Johnson claimed the motel had a lemon tree that illegally blocked the motel’s parking access aisle for wheelchair-accessible vans, the motel’s handicap parking signs didn’t include the phrase “Minimum Fine $250” and its wheelchair-accessible rooms had a pullout couch rather than a second bed.
Johnson also alleged the motel website illegally required those who need a wheelchair accessible room to call to make a reservation rather than being able to reserve a room online.
The family had to pay $22,000 to replace the sign, repaint the parking lot, add a new wheelchair ramp, replace pullout couches with beds and hire an attorney and disability accessibility consultant.
Maher at the time said Johnson didn’t contact her family before filing the lawsuit and doubted that he visited the motel.
I’ve stayed there many times and knew the family. The motel and it’s landscaping made it a beautiful little oasis among all the high rise buildings on El Camino. It’s very sad to see it close.