In less than a month, Riverside’s Mission Inn has gained a new owner, lost two prized pieces of art and sparked a heated debate over the line between private property and community history.
The stage for this controversy was set in early May, when hotel owner Kelly Roberts decided to sell the Mission Inn to the Yuhaaviatam of San Manuel Nation, the tribe that owns the Yaamava’ Resort & Casino in Highland and the Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas.
But it wasn’t the sale (for an undisclosed amount) that started arguments. It was Roberts’ removal of two beloved paintings from the hotel before the sale closed.
A painting at the Mission Inn in Riverside titled “Charge Up San Juan Hill” is taken down on March 20, shortly before the hotel’s change in ownership.
(James Ranger)
One is an alpine landscape called “California Alps” (1874) by William Keith, which measures roughly 6 feet by 8 feet and was displayed in the lobby near the front desk. The other painting, “Charge Up San Juan Hill” (about 1900) by Vasily Vereshchagin, was displayed on a wall of the steakhouse near the lobby. Both paintings had been a part of the hotel for more than a century.
“It was like a slow-motion version of the Louvre Museum heist, pulled off on a sunny day in Riverside in view of guests, staff and visitors,” wrote David Allen of the Riverside Press-Enterprise.
“There’s an outrage among members of this community,” said Mike Marlatt, a Riverside attorney and former board member of the Mission Inn Foundation.
The issue appears to be what agreements Roberts’ late husband made when he bought the building more than 30 years ago.
Former Riverside redevelopment official Ralph Megna, who facilitated the 1992 sale to Duane Roberts’ Historic Mission Inn Corp., wrote on Facebook that “What Kelly is apparently doing at this point is just pillaging the place in violation of those agreements.” But on a phone call, he was less absolute. He said the original pact included an agreement intended to protect about 180 movable pieces of art and artifacts from removal, but that “there’s shades of gray here.” Megna added, “We trusted people. Good faith turned out to be not so good.”
Duane and Kelly Roberts, photographed in 1998 at their home in Laguna Beach. Duane, who reopened the Mission Inn in the early 1990s, died in 2025.
(Glenn Koenig / Los Angeles Times)
Roberts’ family attorney Alan Jackson, however, said “Kelly is not pillaging anything.” He maintained that when Duane Roberts bought the hotel, “he bought every single item. Every single item was the Roberts family’s personal property.” When Kelly Roberts sold the hotel last month, Jackson said, she was free to keep or sell any of its contents.
In that deal, Jackson said, “the buyers would not close” until the paintings and a sculpture of Duane and Kelly Roberts were removed, because “they’re expensive.” Also, Jackson said that Duane Roberts, “before his passing, made it very clear to Kelly and the family that those are two of his favorite paintings ever.”
Jackson declined to say where the artworks are but said “they are in her possession” and “she has no intention of ever getting rid of those ever.”
The iconic spiral staircase in the rotunda of the historic Mission Inn.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
The hotel’s new owner, the San Manuel Investment Authority, declined to address questions about the sale agreement. But in a statement, it said it is “committed to collaborating with the Mission Inn Foundation and the City to respectfully steward and preserve this historic landmark, recognizing its deep history and significance to the Riverside community.”
Despite accolades from groups including Historic Hotels of America, tensions between the Roberts family and Riverside preservationists have risen in recent years. In late 2024, after more than 30 years renting space within the hotel, the nonprofit Mission Inn Foundation and Museum was unable to agree on a lease extension with hotel management and moved to a building on Main Street. Foundation leaders did not respond to messages seeking comment.
“The Mission Inn is so foundational to Riverside that any significant change brings real concern to me and makes me uneasy,” said City Council member Philip Falcone, 28, who has been leading tours of the inn since he was in high school.
The Keith painting is “quintessential California, a romanticized view of the Sierra Nevada range. William Keith, the painter, was friends with John Muir,” Falcone said. As for the San Juan Hill painting, it connects neatly with the history of Theodore Roosevelt, one of nine presidents who have visited the inn.
A guest takes in the view from the Spanish patio at the Mission Inn.
(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)
The hotel is largely the creation of Frank Miller, who bought Glenwood Cottage, a modest boarding house, from his father in 1880. Then Miller enlisted investment help from his friend, railroad magnate Henry Huntington, transformed the boarding house into a hotel and renamed it. Over time, Miller built it into an architectural wonderland filled with art and antiques gathered in the U.S. and Europe. By 1931, the enterprise filled a city block.
“It’s a unique property,” said David Stolte, president of the Old Riverside Foundation. “It’s a National Historic Landmark. It kind of sits at the intersection of private commerce and public benefit. The original owner, Frank Miller, intended it as a public space, essentially a cultural museum, in addition to his business of running a hotel.”
After Miller’s death in 1935, the hotel’s reputation spread even further, attracting dignitaries of the day — and the future. It served as the site of Richard and Pat Nixon’s wedding in 1940 and Ronald and Nancy Reagan’s honeymoon in 1952. But by the 1960s, it was much diminished, and a later owner, Benjamin Swig, had sold close to 1,000 antiques and artworks to help pay bills.
By the mid-1980s, the hotel had passed through a period of city ownership and was closed. By 1992, more than $50 million had been spent in restoration and renovation, but the project was scuttled by a bankruptcy. That’s when Duane Roberts, who grew up in Riverside and made his fortune selling flash-frozen burritos, bought the property and reopened it.
Duane and Kelly Roberts, residents of Laguna Beach, also established the hotel’s annual Festival of Lights, an Inland Empire holiday tradition. The hotel today includes 238 guest rooms, four restaurants, two lounges, two chapels, a spa, pool and candy shop.
Besides their stewardship of the hotel, Duane and Kelly Roberts became known as major donors to the Republican party. In 2017, Politico reported that Kelly Roberts was in line to be named the Trump administration’s ambassador to Slovenia, but turned down the post.
After Duane Roberts died at 88 in November, Riverside buzzed with questions over the fate of the hotel, prompting another Roberts family lawyer to offer public assurances.
“Nobody’s buying this hotel. Mrs. Roberts is keeping this hotel,” attorney Patrick O’Brien told a TV news crew in late November. But on May 4, Kelly Roberts and the San Manuel Investment Authority announced the pending sale.
Festival of Lights, Mission Inn’s popular holiday tradition, was created by Kelly and Duane Roberts after they reopened the hotel.
(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)
Then on May 20, guests spotted workers removing the two paintings from the lobby area. Longtime hotel-watchers said other items had disappeared in recent years, including an 1876 Steinway piano; a statue of the goddess Pomona; William Wendt’s painting “Houses at Arch Beach”; Ilya Repin’s 1884 painting “Portrait of Madame K.”; and the hotel’s Taft Chair, a sturdy oak armchair commissioned by Frank Miller in 1909 to hold 335-pound President Taft. But the midday, presale removal of the Keith and Vereshchagin paintings prompted immediate outcry.
It was “traumatizing, seeing that stuff on display for so long and then seeing it come down,” said James Ranger, a veteran hotel tour guide and Mission Inn Foundation docent. After all the time and money the Roberts family invested in the property, “leaving on this note puts a sour taste out there,” he said.
The sale closed May 29. Though the Roberts family’s attorneys have insisted that the buyers and sellers are in accord, preservation advocates in Riverside have called for a review of documents associated with Roberts’ purchase of the property.
Meanwhile, the hotel’s new era as a tribal holding begins. Besides the two casino-hotels, the Yuhaaviatam of San Manuel Nation owns several other hotels, including the Waldorf Astoria Monarch Beach Resort & Club in Dana Point. As for the Mission Inn, the tribe has signed on Boston-based Pyramid Global Hospitality to take over management, and several changes are already evident.
Notably, the Roberts’ names have been dropped from the signage. Kelly’s Spa has become simply the spa, Duane’s Steakhouse is now just the steakhouse, and Casey’s Cupcakes, a hotel shop founded by Kelly’s daughter Casey Beau Brown, has closed. The Festival of Lights will continue, a spokesperson said.
Stolte said the Old Riverside Foundation believes the tribe will be “great stewards” for the Mission Inn.
“I wish that their welcome to Riverside was a little smoother,” he said.
Staff writer Alex Wigglesworth also contributed to this story.
RIVERSIDE — It would not have been an easy reelection bid in any case for freshman Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Riverside), who barely made it to Congress two years ago.
But now Calvert’s biggest reelection hurdle may be his own indiscretions, which also could pose a problem in surviving even his own party’s June primary.
The reason: After months of denying it, Calvert, 40, has admitted having sex in his car one night last November with a woman who police say is a known prostitute.
Initially, Calvert–a member of a prominent Riverside County family–said he was doing nothing wrong with the woman when police saw them together on a Corona street.
Corona police said simply that the congressman was spotted sitting in his car with a female, that there was no criminal activity and that after a few words the congressman drove off.
But the Riverside Press-Enterprise newspaper went to court to press Corona for release of confidential police reports that had been prepared by officers who were sensitive to the fact that they had a street-level encounter with their local congressman.
The city was ordered to release the report, which indicated that there had been evidence of a sex act under way, and an embarrassed Calvert responded with a prepared statement.
“My conduct that evening was inappropriate,” he said–not because it was illegal, but because “it violated the values of the person I strive to be.” He admitted that he was caught in “an extremely embarrassing situation.”
He said he did not pay for the sex. He said he “panicked and tried to drive away” when the officers confronted him, but “came to my senses” and cooperated with them.
Corona Police Capt. John Dalzell said Calvert was not detained or arrested because “while the officer saw certain things, he didn’t see everything necessary to support a finding that a crime was committed.” Dalzell said there was no witness to an exchange of money for services, and neither party claimed to be a victim.
Dalzell said Calvert did not try to exert influence to avoid arrest. He said the officer’s decision not to pursue the matter “wasn’t a close call. He didn’t even call for a supervisor.”
In his explanation for his conduct that night, Calvert said he had come back from a rough week in Washington and was reeling from his father’s suicide a year earlier, as well as his wife’s request for a divorce, which had been granted just a few weeks before.
“I was feeling intensely lonely,” he said. “I realize now that this, or a similar incident, was probably inevitable.”
Calvert, who worked in commercial real estate before his election to Congress in 1992, was expected to coast to his party’s nomination this year to represent western Riverside County in Washington. His opponent in the primary, conservative Joe Khoury, 47, a professor of finance at UC Riverside, ran second behind Calvert in the primary two years ago but thinks he can prevail this time.
“I thought he was vulnerable, even before this incident,” Khoury said. “Riverside is conservative, and voters’ reaction to this is not pleasant. It plays differently here than it would in, say, Los Angeles.”
Calvert’s campaign manager, Ed Slevin, agreed that Calvert will have his hands full winning the primary because of the Corona incident. “I assume he’s more vulnerable in June among conservative Republicans than he’ll be in November,” he said. “I think that, by then, it’ll be considered old news.”
If Calvert wins the primary, his Democratic challenger is expected to be Mark Takano, a high school history and English teacher and trustee of the Riverside Community College District. Takano lost to Calvert by a little more than 500 votes in 1992, and is expected to handily win his party’s nomination in June against a single challenger.
Takano scolded Calvert for not coming clean earlier about the Corona incident. “Mr. Calvert has only himself to blame for his becoming a bigger issue than putting people back to work, fighting crime and improving our schools,” Takano said.
Democratic Party strategists said that, even before Calvert’s encounter with the woman in Corona, the 43rd Congressional District seat had been targeted for turnover because of what they characterized as Calvert’s lackluster performance in Washington during his first stint there and his vulnerability back home.
A BELOVED lido, boasting elephant slides and splash pads, is set to reopen this Bank Holiday weekend.
This beloved outdoor pool is the last riverside tidal lido in Britain.
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The Strand Lido in Kent is set to reopen for the scorching Bank Holiday weekendCredit: Instagram: The riverside lido boasts elephant slides, a lazy river and a brand-new splash parkCredit: instagram/@medwaysport
The Strand Lido Pool in Gillingham, Medway, will welcome back visitors this Saturday.
Listed as the UK’s only riverside salt water pool, this Kent-based lido uses cleaned river water that is safe for public swimming.
Opened back in 1896, Medway’s only lido has been inviting families to swim for over 130 years.
This Victorian-era lido includes a host of swimming facilities for all ages, including an outdoor leisure pool and toddler paddling pool.
The town has a variety of independent shops and places to eat.
I live in a quaint riverside town full of independent shops – it’s one of the best places to live(Image: Sophie Harris)
From Cotswolds villages to seaside towns, the UK is home to a variety of stunning towns. I love exploring them but to live in one for a substantial amount of time it really has to tick my boxes. After living in Windsor for several years, I was sceptical about moving to a new place. But this hidden gem town just outside London is much quieter and more peaceful.
About 28 miles from London, Marlow is on a scenic stretch of the River Thames and surrounded by the rolling countryside of the Chiltern Hills. Its historic high street and picturesque setting attract visitors from all over the country, yet it still remains fairly quiet, compared to nearby towns like Henley-on-Thames. The town was recorded in the Domesday book as an established settlement, valued for its fertile land and river access.
It then developed as a river crossing and trading point before becoming known for malting and brewing. In the 19th century, the construction of the bridge began to improve connections across the Thames, and the arrival of the railway later in the century further boosted accessibility and growth.
Now, it’s an affluent residential and leisure destination known for its riverside setting, bustling high street and outstanding food scene. It’s regularly voted as one of the best places to live in the UK.
There’s a lot to do and see in the town, including hiring a rowing boat, visiting Higginson Park for a picnic, and visiting the market.
The picturesque high street is full of independent boutiques and eateries, including The Cheese Shed, The Marlow Bookshop and The Dresser. I’m also a huge fan of Laurent’s, an Italian cafe and deli serving delicious sandwiches and coffee. Marlow also hosts regular markets where visitors can find local produce, including delicious homemade gelato by Agosti Gelato and juices from Marlow Juices. The town is well-regarded for its food scene, including award-winning pubs and Michelin-starred dining.
The Hand and Flowers is perhaps the town’s most celebrated restaurant, as it was the first pub in the country to be awarded two Michelin stars, a distinction it still holds today. It’s owned by celebrity chef Tom Kerridge and elevates classic British dishes with refined techniques and bold flavours. However, dining here doesn’t come cheap, with prices for a set Sunday lunch around £195.
Housing and living costs tend to be above the national average, reflecting its desirability and commuter-friendly location. According to Rightmove, the average price of a house in Marlow over the last year was just shy of £700,000. This is more than double the UK’s current average of £290,000, according to the Office for National Statistics.
The town is also close to towns and villages like Bourne End, Cookham, and Bray, and exploring Cliveden, a National Trust property, is my favourite weekend destination.
Riverside County has been ordered to pay $2.25 million to a former sergeant who said he was pressured into early retirement in retaliation for reporting workplace harassment by a superior.
Sgt. Frank Lodes was forced to leave the job he loved in 2022 — penning a resignation letter in a Del Taco parking lot — while a high-ranking department official threatened him with mounting investigations, according to the complaint. On Tuesday a civil jury concluded that Lodes resigned involuntarily due to his reporting of a hostile workplace and was awarded the multimillion-dollar payment as compensation for his emotional damages.
Lodes’ attorney Bijan Darvish said the award was a “significant number” that adequately represents the harm inflicted on Lodes, noting that the period since his forced retirement has been the “darkest four years” of Lodes’ life.
He said that his client did not wish to comment on the verdict as discussing the events remained painful. The Sheriff’s Department and the county did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“Being a cop was his life; he lived and breathed it 24/7,” Darvish said. “It was his entire identity, and that’s why it was so difficult for him when it was taken away.”
The jury award comes amid a rare wide-open governor’s race that includes the head of the Sheriff’s Department, Chad Bianco, who is a leading GOP candidate for the seat. Bianco has staked his campaign on his lengthy career in law enforcement, which spans more than three decades, including serving as the elected sheriff of Riverside County since 2019.
Although high-ranking Sheriff’s Department officials were involved in Lodes’ case, Darvish said there was no evidence presented at trial that Bianco had direct knowledge of his client’s mistreatment. Bianco was not a defendant in the lawsuit. His campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
Darvish argues that the case points to a departmental culture of covering up allegations of misconduct.
“When there’s a harassment complaint made against the captain and they never investigated, and they pressure someone to resign and withdraw the complaint,” he said, “then that’s a systemic issue.”
The retaliation began after Lodes, a 25-year veteran of the department, formally reported workplace harassment with human resources in March 2022, according to the complaint.
Lodes had been called mentally ill in front of his peers by a captain during a promotability meeting around October 2021. A few months later, he found degrading posters of his head on a child’s body shoved inside his uniform pockets and gun holster and plastered over the station walls, according to the complaint.
The department responded to his harassment report by launching an investigation into Lodes unlawfully using informants and threatening him with possible criminal prosecution, according to Darvish.
The jury agreed that these allegations were a manufactured excuse to cover up unlawful retaliation.
Within days of filing the workplace harassment complaint, a Internal Affairs sergeant packed Lodes’ personal belongings in a box and drove them to his house, according to the complaint. The sergeant spent hours pressuring Lodes, then 47, to accept early retirement.
The following day, Lodes was told to meet with a high-ranking official in the Sheriff’s Department in a Del Taco parking lot who instructed him to resign immediately and withdraw his harassment complaint.
The $2.25-million award in the civil case will come from the county’s coffers.
The award casts renewed scrutiny on Bianco’s Sheriff’s Department two weeks before primary election ballots land in Californians’ mailboxes.
He was also in the spotlight in March after seizing more than 650,000 ballots from the November election as part of an investigation to determine if they were fraudulently counted. He put the investigation on hold shortly before the California Supreme Court halted it pending further review.
Times staff writer James Queally contributed to this report.
