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Wyndham Condo Plan Goes to City Planners

Newport Beach-based Makar Properties LLC is moving on plans to turn its Wyndham Orange County in Costa Mesa into a boutique hotel and condominium tower that could run more than 20 stories.

Makar filed plans with the city last week to completely overhaul the Wyndham, which it bought last year for a reported $42 million.

The proposal,rumored to be in the works for several months,adds another glitzy high-rise to the mix for the area around South Coast Plaza.

Five separate high-rise condo development projects, totaling eight towers, were signed off by Costa Mesa’s City Council last month.

The first of those, the Californian at Town Center, should break ground this summer. The Irvine office of Chicago-based Fifield Cos. is building the 250-home, two-tower project.

The Wyndham is on 3 acres across the street from the new Ren & #233;e and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall. The six-story hotel now runs about 160,500 square feet with 238 rooms. Next to the hotel is a three-level, 240-space parking structure at about 85,000 square feet.

Under Makar’s initial plans, renovations would include cutting the hotel’s rooms to 200 and demolishing the parking structure.

In its place would be a luxury condo tower running along Avenue of the Arts with up to 120 homes and a parking structure behind it. The condo tower could run as tall as 306 feet. The high-rises signed off on by the city last month run as tall as 315 feet, or 25 stories.

A spa and restaurant would be part of the Makar project. Wyndham guests now have access to an offsite spa next to South Coast Plaza.

The hotel would close during construction of the tower.

A time frame for the development isn’t known. It isn’t expected to start until 2010, at the earliest. Officials for Makar declined to comment.

The company spent several months renovating the Wyndham, built in 1984, after buying it in March. The deal was the third-largest hotel sale in Orange County in 2006. Upgrades were made to the hotel’s rooms, entry, lobby and restaurant.

Paul Makarechian, Makar’s chief executive, called the hotel “a diamond in the rough” at its relaunching in August.

Among the eight towers planned for Costa Mesa’s arts district is another hotel-condo project at Segerstrom Town Center, proposed by C.J. Segerstrom & Sons LLC. That project would see 50 condos atop a 200-room luxury hotel, likely a Mandarin Oriental, according to city officials.

Hotel projects, including a few high-rises, also have been proposed for sites around John Wayne Airport in Irvine. Work on a 174-room Renaissance ClubSport hotel in Aliso Viejo began last May. It’s part of the latest phase of Parker Properties LLC’s Summit Office Campus.

Makar, which also owns the St. Regis Monarch Beach Resort & Spa in Dana Point, is building another hotel at its Pacific City development in Huntington Beach.

Pacific City includes a 200-room luxury hotel, 190,000 square feet of shops, restaurants and about 500 condos. The city signed off on the project late last year.

There were 12 hotels under development in OC in 2006, compared to 10 a year earlier, according to the latest figures from Irvine-based Atlas Hospitality Group.

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Mark Mueller
Mark Mueller
Mark is the Editor-in-Chief of the Orange County Business Journal, one of the premier regional business newspapers in the country. He’s the fifth person to hold the editor’s position in the paper’s long history. He oversees a staff of about 15 people. The OCBJ is considered a must-read for area business executives. The print edition of the paper is the primary source of local news for most of the Business Journal’s subscribers, which includes most of OC’s major corporate and community players. Mark’s been with the paper since 2005, and long served as the real estate reporter for the paper, breaking hundreds of commercial and residential real estate stories. He took on the editor’s position in 2018.
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