Santa Monica Rents Its Camera Obscura to Switzerland for $300,000. The Design Is Priced at $613,838.

Staff asked to skip competitive bidding on the design: a bid would have added six months and missed the Swiss deadline.

Switzerland will pay Santa Monica $300,000 to use the Camera Obscura building at 1450 Ocean Avenue from June 14 to September 21, 2028, with an option to pay $200,000 more for adjacent stretches of Palisades Park, according to the staff report the City Council took up on May 26. Seven weeks later, the Public Works Department came back to the same council asking for $613,838 to design the renovation the Swiss are coming for.

Both requests arrived on the consent calendar — item 4.H in May, item 4.A in July — the block of the agenda a council disposes of in one vote unless a member pulls something out of it.

The $613,838 buys drawings, not construction. The July report asks the council to authorize an agreement with Omgivning, Inc. for design services in an amount not to exceed that figure, and says the construction contract is a separate procurement that would go out for a formal bid and come back to the council in early 2027, with the work finished by June 2027. The building itself doesn't have a price yet.

What the design request does have is an exemption. Services at that amount normally require a formal competitive bid under the city's own purchasing code; staff invoked Santa Monica Municipal Code 2.24.250(g) — the exception for circumstances outside the city's control that would “result in a substantial economic loss” — logged as approved exception ECB #472. The reasoning is one sentence long. A competitive bid “would likely add six months to the project timeline,” and six months would miss the June 2027 delivery deadline the Swiss agreement set; miss that, the report says, and the city “risks losing the lease with the FDFA.” Omgivning is described as bringing hospitality, adaptive-reuse and historic-preservation experience, and prior experience with the site.

The city's agenda portal carries the July 14 agenda and its staff report. It doesn't carry minutes for that meeting. What the public record shows today is the request and its number, not the tally.

The May item wasn't one transaction. It set out three — two new license agreements and one, Club France, already authorized and back for its code waivers — and together they read like a rate card for the coast:

• Camera Obscura building — Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, June 14 to September 21, 2028: $300,000, plus $200,000 if Switzerland exercises its option on the adjacent park.
• Santa Monica Pier deck, a stretch of beach south of the pier and two beach parking lots — ESPN Productions, LLC, January 18 to February 22, 2027, for the Super Bowl: $1,057,654.
• Annenberg Community Beach House — the French National Olympic Committee, which runs Club France, June 30 to August 4, 2028: $1,550,000.

We added them: $2,907,654 across three license periods, or $3,107,654 if the Swiss take the park.

The fees come with the code switched off. Resolutions attached to the same May item suspend, for the license periods, the closing-hour limits on entertainment venues (municipal code 4.08.340), the restrictions on construction hours, most of the noise chapter, the rules against peddling, vending and street performing on the beach and in parks, and the sign code's ceiling on temporary advertising. The stated reason for round-the-clock operation is arithmetic: the report cites the nine-hour difference between Santa Monica and Switzerland, and the nine hours to Paris for Club France. None of it would have been available a month earlier — the council introduced the ordinance authorizing these waivers on April 14 and adopted it on April 28.

The May report says the license agreements are “structured to provide full cost recovery” and aren't expected to require a city subsidy. That sentence is about the cost of hosting — planning, permitting, public safety coordination, inspections, site restoration — and not about the capital work. The design money is a separate ask on the General Fund, and the report says the future-year half of it is contingent on a budget approval that hasn't happened yet. The report's case for the wider benefit rests on the city's standard visitor assumptions, which it states plainly: $47 of spending per person per day, and an average June hotel rate of $363 since 2023.

The building is 5,000 square feet, put up in 1955 as a Senior Recreation Center and designed by Weldon J. Fulton; the Santa Monica Conservancy records that the philanthropist Marcellus L. Joslyn donated it to the city in memory of his wife. The optical device is older than the room around it. The Conservancy dates the camera obscura to 1898 and says the city bought it in 1910 and moved it to what is now Palisades Park. In 2007 the city landmarked the park, with the camera obscura and the recreation center named as contributing elements.

The Art Lab that had been using the building has moved to Bergamot Station, the July report says, to clear the space for activation and construction. The city's own page for the venue says the camera obscura mechanism “is closed to the public, except during special events.” During the Games, the same report says, the building will be open to the public free of charge.

The missing piece is a tenant. Santa Monica's leasing page is advertising up to 2,000 square feet of café and “warming” kitchen space in the building, seeking “qualified café operators, hospitality professionals, and food and beverage concessionaires,” with proposals due October 1. The same page lists an open house on September 1 and a question deadline pushed from September 3 to September 7, which it attributes to the Labor Day holiday. The Santa Monica Daily Press, which reported the solicitation Thursday, says it went out August 20, that operators are being asked to propose base rent, percentage rent tied to gross receipts, capital investment and equipment contributions, and that a first review is tentatively set for October 5. The same story puts Switzerland's total budget for its Olympic presence at 5.5 million Swiss francs, roughly $6.9 million. The license fee Santa Monica is charging is about four percent of that.

Applications close October 1. The contract with the actual building work priced into it is due back before the council in early 2027.

Sources: Santa Monica City Council staff reports of May 26, 2026 (item 4.H) and July 14, 2026 (item 4.A); the city's leasing opportunities and Camera Obscura Art Lab pages; the Santa Monica Conservancy; and the Santa Monica Daily Press. All retrieved September 3, 2026. The three-fee total is our arithmetic on the figures in the May report.