As of last June, it was still sputtering along, although the gap between the grandiosity of the plans and the money on hand to achieve them seemed to grow ever wider. However, you have to hand it to Baker, California, entrepreneur and electrical engineer Luis Ramallo: He not only wanted you to stay at his planned UFO Hotel, he wanted you to pay for the privilege of helping him build it. Ramallo got $11,592 in pledges from 38 people on Kickstarter "to create a detailed set of plans and construction drawings followed by a wide range of permits needed for the construction" before thinking better of the idea.
Kickstarter inducements included a "trendy ‘Area 51/Alien Parking Only’ embossed metal sign, straight from outer space" in return for a $35 contribution. The Kickstarter campaign was nixed in June. A short-lived Indiegogo campaign last November fared even worse. The UFO Hotel’s Twitter feed has gone silent since then, too.
Ramallo is probably taking the setback in stride. "If it fails, it fails," he told a newspaper in 2014, "I’m not going to kill myself." His promotional video suggested a very costly project, much more so than you could crowd-source online. Ramallo, a self-described "alien" from Argentina, envisioned a two-story, 31-room hotel shaped like a spacecraft and featuring "alien-themed" rooms, plus a restaurant, spa, nightclub and a wedding chapel where you could plight your troth in alien costumes.
"Alien raves," $40 a pop, would be held. The swimming pool would be shaped like a "Roswell alien" head. Ramallo’s jerky store would be scrapped in favor of a two-story, 5,600-square-foot business park. What’s more, "We plan to bring you the very best in on open air and stage entertainment with well-known artists and stage personalities." The plans received the unanimous approval of the San Bernardino County Planning Commission.
Ramallo’s claim to fame is his Alien Fresh Jerky ($9 a package), a taste sensation that has drawn 750,000 visitors to his convenience store in Baker (72242 Baker Boulevard). Back in early 2014, Ramallo’s hotel concept drew the attention of the Los Angeles Times. "I want to make improvements and put Baker on the map again, and we will," he promised. By that point, he’d already put five years into the hotel idea, even hiring an architect, David Weiss. The design went through many mutations, including one that was windowless. Exclaimed Ramallo, "There’s nothing to see in Baker!" (That should have told him something about the uphill struggle his $30 million project faces.)
Ramallo, 57, went from doing electrical work in Las Vegas to running a roadside jerky stand in Lincoln County, Nevada (where claimed, as an immigrant, to be "the real alien in Area 51!"), before being persuaded to move his business somewhere closer to civilization, when he spotted a six-acre parcel in Baker in 2001. The original store soon gave way to an even larger one and Ramallo hung up his electrician’s tool belt for good. Baker Community Services District General Manager Jacob Overson said of Ramallo’s total commitment to Baker, "It’s either going to make or break him. It’s a hell of a gamble, but all of his friends say he likes taking those gambles."
What would the hotel have been like? Room prices initially would have been "under $300 depending on seasonality." (Pretty steep for the Baker market.) Later, the project had grown to include "an alien colony from the 25th century," with a huge ‘mothership mall’ and outdoor concert venue.
On May 15, 2015, NBC4 Los Angeles reported that projected room rentals had escalated to $750, calling the hotel "a mix of mad and genius." A symbolic groundbreaking had been held and a fence adorned with project renderings surrounded the site. Ramallo’s stated aim to eventually lure Comicon to Baker (pop. 700) suggested that the desert heat had finally gotten the better of his senses. And investors willing to plunk $30 million into his vision appear to be scarcer than living, breathing extraterrestrials. The more difficult the fundraising becomes, the bigger Ramallo’s ideas get. (LVA tried to contact him for an update but was unable to do so.)
While Ramallo’s project seems to have entered the realm of the delusional, another alien-themed attraction is still happily doing business up in Rachel, Nevada. The Little A’Le’Inn is heavily booked, in its 26th year of hosting guests near Area 51. In addition to providing hospitality to UFOlogists, Pat, the owner, sells an extensive line of alien-themed tchotchkes, including cute Christmas stockings adorned with little green men. Rooms start at $35/night and, for an extra $15, you can bring your pet, which the Inn encourages.
Astronomy and geocaching are popular activities in the Rachel area. There’s even a 10-hour Area 51 tour, with stops for petroglyphs and the Black Mailbox, a UFO-sighting site. Parts of the Little A’Le’Inn Web site haven’t been updated in years but we called and it is still very much in business.
The Little A’Le’Inn is not to be confused with the Area 51 Hotel & Casino, a project that seems never to have progressed beyond a lurid graphic and discussion on an Internet chat board belonging to condo association Worldmark Owners. Also envisioned for Rachel, it was a proposed $10 million development that would have included a miniature golf course and a brothel, with prostitutes named Starlight and Heavenly, plus 100 motel rooms.
The project’s proponent even had the nerve to use images of Little A’Le’Inn souvenirs to demonstrate the kind of tchotchkes he would sell. Other potential inducements were a flying saucer-shaped swimming pool and a $6.99 prime rib special. The supposedly can’t-miss sales pitch was that Rachel would donate the land in return for seven percent tax receipts on Area 51 Hotel proceeds. "We would also generate lots of jobs and pay lots of sales tax as well," the pitchman stated hopefully. You could get in on the ground floor for just $50,000.
That was seven years ago. The project’s slogan – "It doesn’t exist and you weren’t there" – was ultimately its epitaph. (A copycat project, Dennis Hof’s conversion of the Cherry Patch brothel Area 51 Alien Cathouse, with its "Alien Abduction/Probing Room," in Armagosa, did manage to get off the ground in 2012, however.)
