Hotel Ordered to Put Alarms on Balcony Doors

The El Segundo City Council has told the Crown Sterling Suites hotel to install alarms on balcony doors to answer neighbors’ complaints that guests had peered into their back yards and homes from the balconies.

“We want our privacy back, and if it means having to listen to a loud alarm, that’s fine,” said Edie Warwick, whose yard is separated by a narrow alley from the five-story hotel on Imperial Avenue.

The council, in a 3 to 0 vote Tuesday, with Jim Clutter and ScotDannen abstaining, required the hotel to install alarms in the 160 rooms on the south side of the hotel. The installation will cost $10,000, according to the hotel.

Warwick said hotel guests have peered at her through binoculars and video camera recorders. “I feel like I’m in a fishbowl, with them looking down at us from balconies. We’re very vulnerable,” she said.

Hotel manager Shar Franklin argued unsuccessfully that the alarms would deter guests from opening the sliding glass doors. Franklin proposed attaching secondary locks and a warning sticker to the doors, adding that the hotel recently began telling guests and personnel not to open the sliding doors except in emergencies. Hotel security officers patrol the area to ensure compliance, she said.

However, Councilman J.B. Wise said he did not think the secondary locks and warning stickers would work.

“That lick ‘em, stick ‘em thing is not a solution,” Wise said. “I want a buzzer on top of the bed, so when the door is open the guests can’t sleep.”

Hotel neighbor Jeri Johnson, who rarely ventures into her back yard anymore, said the alarm will provide her with some kind of relief and will deter “peeping Toms.”

“It will make it uncomfortable for room guests, and attention will be drawn to them,” Johnson said. The noise, she said, would not bother her.