Surfrider hotel by Emma Crowther & Matthew Goodwin

When Matthew Goodwin and Emma Crowther converted a 1950s motel into a boutique hotel, it was all about getting guests out of their rooms.

Emma Crowther and Matthew Goodwin outside their hotel, Surfrider Malibu. Picture: James Cant.

On a crisp morning on the Pacific Coast Highway north of LA, I’m in the rooftop restaurant of The Surfrider hotel in Malibu, sipping a flat white and listening to a local kid, all of 11 years old, chat about First Point – the famous break located just across the highway at Surfrider Beach – with the restaurant’s manager, Travis Collings, also local. First Point is known as a long-board friendly wave, one that rolls in solidly just west of Malibu Pier. But a short board is de rigueur for Second or Third Point, the two breaks further out, and this boy, perched on the stool next to me, his feet dangling high above the ground, was ready to carve it up.

Collings appraised him with a smile. “Your mom still asleep?” he asked gently. The boy nodded. He and his mother had checked in a few days before, when the devastating Woolsey fire had forced them to evacuate. He was, for the moment, homeless, having arrived with just a few things and no idea whether he’d eventually have a house to return to. (I later understood he was staying free of charge, as were several other displaced locals.)

But waves are waves; and what he was presently concerned about was whether there was anywhere nearby to rent a short board. Alas, Collings told him, there wasn’t; but, he said, he’d be happy to drive out to his own house (which he later described as “an uninhabitable no-power ash-bomb”) and bring back his favourite board for the boy to use. Deal? The boy grinned shyly down into his breakfast. Deal.

This, needless to say, is not the usual scene at a buzz-generating new boutique hotel. But there’s not much that’s usual about The Surfrider, the work of a young couple – Southern California-born-and-bred Matthew Goodwin, an architect and developer, and Brisbane native Emma Crowther – who left a dynamic life in Manhattan to grab a one-time chance at creating, as Goodwin has called it, “a space that could tell a story, and that story is Malibu”. Not so easy, when Malibu itself scarcely resembles the freewheeling beach town it once was (see page 62 for more on its evolution); but all the more meaningful – and successful – for it.

No real design intervention had taken place at The Surfrider in more than 70 years, since it came into existence in 1953 as the Malibu Shores Motel, its steep-pitched roof bowering over room doors that opened right onto minuscule balconies overlooking a parking lot, the Pacific Coast Highway and, beyond, the famous pier and surf break. Goodwin, a lifelong surfer who grew up just across the county line in Ventura, had spent his youth looking at The Surfrider from the perspective of the water; it was part of his, and Malibu’s, history. So when, decades later and randomly, he heard it was for sale, it felt like kismet and a homecoming all in one.

“It was a four-year renovation,” says Crowther; “and we really took it down to the studs.” The signature roofline was blown out to create airy pitched ceilings; the entrances were flipped to the back of the building, and floor-to-ceiling glass doors opening onto balconies (each hung with a deep, comfy hammock) replaced the old entrances. A forgotten storage space above the former manager’s office became a breezy library hung with prints, its marble-top tables and shelves lined with art tomes, its reclaimed teak plank floors covered with kilims. The lobby, a living room-like space with a large refectory table, is also new.

“Matt, as an architect-developer, was very focused on using materials that aren’t ‘hotel’ ones,” says Crowther. “The rooms aren’t big, so we wanted them to feel really good. Everywhere in The Surfrider it’s real stone, solid wood – very tactile finishes. It’s meant to feel like a patina’d beach house.”

Surfrider’s rooftop restaurant.

With their wainscoted white walls, slouchy sofas dressed in dusty sage or oatmeal linen, vast four-poster beds and lazily spinning ceiling fans, the rooms deliver fully on the mandate Crowther and Goodwin set. Natural surfaces mirror the tones of hills, sand and sky outside; there is an abundance of natural light, and zero pretence.

Within weeks of opening at the end of 2017, the Goodwin-Crowthers were contacted by TripAdvisor: the site’s local operators wanted to let them know they’d never seen a small, new, independent property garner so many five-star reviews in so short a time. This was especially gratifying, notes Crowther, because there was some concern as to whether all of The Surfrider’s guests – a sprawling spectrum that includes European creatives, south-east Asians, a healthy contingent of New Yorkers, Australians (of course), and a smattering of locals from Point Dume, just up the road – would “get” the place.

“It takes a bit of time with some guests, to get them to that mentality – that your room is only your bedroom, as in any house, and that what’s really cool about The Surfrider is what’s out there,” says Crowther. “That’s why we have the long boards [custom-shaped by a local] for them to use, and the Land Rover [a mint 1968 vintage one, for guided tours and drives] and the complimentary Minis [a recent brand partnership]. We don’t want them thinking about ‘their room’; we want them to use ‘their beach house’, and to explore Malibu.”

The rooftop restaurant – another minor stroke of creative genius, given the original motel was not zoned for any public eateries – is The Surfrider’s place to be. (It’s also a quiet hit with locals, among them a handful of the celebrities who call Malibu home; Liam Hemsworth is apparently enamoured of the house cocktail, a coconut-infused rum concoction called, natch, The Endless Summer.) The food is, again, pretence-free: fresh, with elements of Latin America and Asia, and sourced locally with meticulous care by Crowther.

Then there is the excellent company of the staff: Collings and his co-manager, Helen Hening (whose father Glenn created The Surfrider Foundation, one of Southern California’s most loved environmental organisations), and a handful of others, all locals who are not just willing but actually totally stoked to share their favourite haunts and hidden gems.

“My family has a place in Federal, in Byron, and it’s similar to Malibu in that despite all the development they’re both places that are still sort of ‘if you know, you know’,” says Crowther. “If they get the right kind of guest, they’ll give him or her the full experience.”

The Surfrider doesn’t miss a trick in terms of design: it’s easy, seamless, deeply comfortable and unassailably stylish. But it’s these people – the community within a community – that truly make the place. Just ask the kid on Collings’s short board.