Iconic SLO County beach town motel starts major renovation
For going on a decade, a once-thriving tourist destination in the heart of Avila Beach has stood in varying states of disrepair and reconstruction — but after a slew of delays, the historic property finally has a plan to return to its former glory.
As developments go, the Dun Sailing Motel is something of an odd duck, overlooking much of Avila Beach from its sloped perch on 145 San Luis St.
Originally constructed in the 1952 by Rose and Marshall Ellis, the pair of two-story buildings served a unique blend of apartment housing and hotel rooms, with most of its guests checking in for longer month-to-month stays.
Jim Miller, the developer looking to rejuvenate the property, said the motel has been out of normal use since the early 2010s, and is long overdue for a refresh.
Miller and others involved with the hotel’s ownership initially tried to get a renovation started in 2018, but the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent overhauls of California’s building rules created what Miller described as “impossible situation” for the property, putting the renovation on hold.
But now, with more than 250 unique code and permitting issues around the property’s redevelopment settled with the county, Miller and his team are finally moving forward with the motel’s rebirth.
“As I told (District 3 Supervisor Dawn Ortiz-Legg) at one point in time, honestly, the wind had gotten knocked out of my sails,” Miller said. “I’ve got to get the wind back in my sails.”
Large-scale renovations underway at Dun Sailing
As Miller’s team gets to work at Dun Sailing, longstanding issues with the property will be among the first to be addressed, he said.
The property was in a state of disrepair when work started, with unfinished exterior walls and very little of its original look surviving into the 21st century, he said.
To start, Miller’s team is beefing up the project’s northern retaining walls, which stand directly above residential homes on San Miguel Street, remedying structural issues and resurfacing the driveway area, he said.
The redevelopment isn’t the first in the motel’s history, with signs of an expansion constructed in the early 1960s still visible today through a small change in elevation that splits the building in two, he said.
A pool originally built in 1964 that was described in a September 1998 Telegram-Tribune article as the first built in Avila Beach will also be repositioned to make better use of the lot space, he said.
Some of the 24 old rooms will be combined to form larger units, with a total of 16 units plus a manager’s unit planned in the final build, Miller said.
There’s some dispute over exactly how the motel got its name. In that 1998 Telegram-Tribune article, original builder Marshall Ellis said he named the motel Dun Sailing because he was “done roamin’ ” as a builder of giant steel bridges across the country.
Over its lifetime, as it became a popular place to stay during summer vacations, the name gained new meaning from its guests, said Ortiz-Legg, who helped Miller organize meetings with neighbors during the planning phase.
“Supposedly, the story goes that the guys would be out on their boats or something, and then their gals would be up here, and they’d put a towel down off of the thing to say, ‘You’re done sailing, now come back home and have dinner,’” Ortiz-Legg said.
New Dun Sailing aims to open in next two years
While the design work will freshen up the motel’s look, the one thing that won’t be changing is its intended use, Ortiz-Legg said.
“This is a commercial recreation zone, and so people would come here and rent a room for the summer or rent a room for a week with the family and things like that,” Ortiz-Legg said. “That’s kind of what it’s going to continue to be — it’s not a hotel, it’s not an apartment building, it’s a combination of both, in a way.”
Miller said rooms will be available for a night, a week, a month, a year — whatever the tenant or vacationing party wants.
He said with the project’s permitting and code issues resolved at the county level, construction is underway, and could be finished within the next two years.
“I would say that if we’re not done in two years, it’s my fault,” Miller said.
This story was originally published December 2, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
