Developer Planning Revamp of Buena Park Meeting Center
By JENNIFER BELLANTONIO
The Sequoia Conference Center in Buena Park may see a new fate yet.
A year ago, a religious group wanted to buy the 239,000-square-foot facility and convert it to a Buddhist center. But the city shot that one down. Now Sequoia center has another taker.
Ed Jay, owner of Rolling Hills Estates-based Asset Enhancement Services LLC, a real estate developer and consultant, plans to buy the Sequoia center for an undisclosed amount and renovate it.
The acquisition and upgrades are set to be paid through bond debt with help from the California Statewide Communities Devel-opment Agency, which provides local governments and industry access to low-cost financing.
The center’s sale is expected to finalize in January, when the bonds are issued. Until then, Asset Enhancement is operating the conference center under a ground lease.
The Sequoia center is a mixed bag. The site serves as a conference center and also has a banquet hall. Then there’s a 40-lane bowling alley, medical offices and a health club.
Jay’s plan calls for the addition of 6,200 square feet of conference space, including a corporate clubroom and two private dining rooms. He’s closed the bowling alley and plans to make it a ballroom. A full-service spa near the health club and a new kitchen also are in works.
A new hotel has been talked about,something city officials have been hot for,on what is now a parking lot adjacent to the center. But, after two years of hotel building in Orange County and Sept. 11, the plan is off, Jay said.
“That changed everything,” Jay said of the terrorist attacks and ensuing economic downturn.
The center, which typically holds corporate meetings involving 2,000 to 3,000 people, saw its revenue plummet 50% in September and October, Jay said. Weddings, another big chunk of Sequoia’s business, were postponed when people refused to fly in, he said.
“The travel and hotel industry has gone to pot,” Jay said.
That’s painful for Buena Park, since the area typically benefits from “overflow” business coming from Anaheim and the Disneyland Resort, said Donald W. Wise, chief executive officer of Corona del Mar-based Wise Hotel Investments Inc. Wise said he represented a potential buyer interested in the Sequoia center last year.
Because the fly-in market is soft, Jay said he decided to put off the hotel and focus on luring more business from the local market. Hotels within walking distance from the center can handle lodging needs, he said.
Jay said he has fielded calls from companies such as Staples Inc., Rite Aid Corp. and Kraft Foods Inc.’s Nabisco that are interested in meeting space.
To serve smaller, regional meetings, Jay said he plans to carve the conference center into 33 “breakout” rooms, while providing bigger meeting areas. Plus, each room will have teleconferencing gear so groups can communicate with colleagues nationally, he said.
The center’s staff has grown by about 20%, bringing the employee count to 200, Jay said.
Executive chef Dan Paymar and others joined Sequoia from the Hilton Waterfront Beach Resort in Huntington Beach, Jay said.
The health club side of the center has seen changes, too. Jay said he added a new spa complete with manicures, body wraps and a children’s daycare area.
Now Sequoia faces another big challenge: Getting its name out.
“The one thing that requires us to conduct a serious ad campaign is that nobody knows about us,” Jay said. “To my knowledge there’s been little advertising” done by the center in the past 18 years, he said.
Jay said he plans to market in a 50-mile radius from the center and target corporations that want to hold meetings in the range of 200 to 1,500 people, which is a lot smaller than past events.
Tom Bolman, chair of the New York-based Convention Industry Council and executive vice president of the International Association of Conference Centers in St. Louis, Mo., said smaller corporate conferences are fairing better than large conventions.
That’s because corporate conference attendance typically is mandatory and meetings are held locally, he said.
“Corporate meetings tend to hold up well even in difficult economic times because corporations always need to meet for strategic planning,” he said.
To get the word out about the center’s new focus, Sequoia hired Magnet Communica-tions in Los Angeles to handle its public relations. Soon, Sequoia plans to hold a review for its undisclosed advertising account.
But the jury is out whether the new plans will be the magic answer for the center.
“The vision of going after local business is a short-term answer,it’s not necessarily a long term answer,” Wise said. n
