Steps from the Venice boardwalk sits a four-suite boutique property that looks like any other coastal guesthouse from the outside, but inside, every wall is doing double duty as a museum exhibit. The Redline Venice is a Black-owned hotel where guests can scan QR codes next to framed artwork to learn about the history or artist behind each piece, turning a weekend stay into what co-founder Kamau Coleman calls cultural tourism.
The hotel was founded by Coleman and Michael Clinton, who according to CBS LA bought the beachfront property during the pandemic with plans to convert it into apartments. Those plans changed once the pair learned about the contributions African Americans made to the area, reshaping their concept into what blackhotelguide.com describes as a four-suite Black-owned boutique property that combines accommodations with history, art and cultural storytelling. The Redline Hotel Group has described the result as converting a forgotten space into a museum guesthouse.
The four individual accommodations — a studio, one-bedroom, two-bedroom and three-bedroom unit — each carry their own theme, according to the Hollywood Reporter. One suite honors the Black and brown laborers who dug the canals and developed the area, per CBS LA, even though those same laborers were denied the right to call the neighborhood home. Another suite is dedicated to Black surf and skate pioneers.
A Neighborhood Shaped By Hands That Couldn't Live There
Abbot Kinney set out in the early 1900s to build his Venice of America resort 12 miles west of downtown Los Angeles, and the labor behind that vision tells its own story. The Los Angeles City Clerk's records note that many Black and Mexican-American paid laborers worked to build the canals and Kinney's vision for the shoreline community. Arthur Reese served as Kinney's lead decorator, while Irvin Tabor was described as Kinney's confidant, according to CBS LA.
Despite that foundational work, Black families were denied mortgages, insurance and home loans in Venice in the 1930s, and the neighborhood was redlined from the 1930s to the late 1960s, per CBS LA's reporting. City Clerk documents confirm that these residential patterns stemmed from informal discrimination, racist covenants and redlining, with most Black residents in Venice confined to clusters between California Avenue, Electric Avenue, Brooks Avenue and Lincoln Boulevard until the 1940s. Venice went on to become known as the slum by the sea in the 1950s before becoming an enclave for the beatnik generation following a short-lived oil boom.
Some milestones cut against that exclusion. John Quincy Tabor Jr. became the first Black lifeguard in Los Angeles city and county in the 1940s, according to the City Clerk's records, while CBS LA reports he became the first Black Mexican American lifeguard in the city. Arthur L. Reese also served as president of the Santa Monica-Venice branch of the NAACP in 1918, per the City Clerk.
Art That Spells Out a Rigged Game
The hotel's creative director, Sophea Samreth, created the artwork displayed throughout the property, per CBS LA's reporting. One piece depicts elitists playing shuffleboard over a color-lined map of Los Angeles — a visual reference to redlining practices. Destinee Sales, cited in the same report, said people of color did not know the game was rigged against them.
Michael Clinton told CBS LA that the hotel is reclaiming redlining and turning it into something positive and inspirational. The Redline Venice says historian Alison Rose Jefferson's expertise forms the foundation of its historical research, according to the hotel's own blog.
Guests Notice the Difference
Not every visitor arrives chasing history, but some leave having absorbed it. The Hooper family chose the Redline Venice instead of their usual Airbnb while visiting their son, who lives in Venice, according to CBS LA. Brenda Hooper said the hotel was different from places they had rented before. Jennifer Weisner, also cited in that report, said she did not know the history of the Abbot Kinney area before staying there.
The Redline Hotel Group says on its own site that the Venice property exceeded revenue expectations, with guests staying longer, paying more and returning often. The Hollywood Reporter has put the property's total cost at a little more than $1 million, including renovations and a roof deck, with nightly reservations reported between $350 and $750 and options for stays of a month or longer.
Expansion Plans and a Wider Pattern
Per CBS LA, the Redline Group plans to expand the concept to cities nationwide, beginning with New Orleans and Miami, while the Redline Hotel Group's own account of its plans points to Inglewood and New Orleans. Black hotel ownership may account for less than 3% of the hospitality industry, according to travelnoire.com.
The Redline Venice follows in the footsteps of other Black-owned lodging that filled gaps left by segregation. The Dunbar Hotel in Los Angeles, built as the Hotel Somerville for the first West Coast NAACP convention in 1928, provided first-class accommodations for African Americans who were denied comparable lodging elsewhere, according to the Los Angeles Conservancy. It became a hub of the Central Avenue jazz scene, hosting musicians including Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Count Basie and Bessie Smith. Los Angeles once had 224 businesses listed in the Negro Motorist Green Book, including the Biltmore Hotel, Clifton's Cafeteria and the Dunbar, according to LAmag.
