Robert Mayer Sr.’s reach can be measured in stories.
Just look at the two hotels he built in Huntington Beach: the 4-story, 517-room Hyatt Regency Huntington Beach Resort & Spa and the 12-story, 285-room Waterfront Beach Resort, A Hilton Hotel.
Mayer built them when Huntington Beach was just a surf town—nowhere near the resort destination it has become (see story, page 1).
His Irvine-based Mayer Corp. is still building: Waterfront plans a June debut of a second tower, with 152 more rooms.
Hyatt and Hilton combined will by June offer more than 950 rooms—about 20% of them suites.
Stories flow also from Mayer’s memory—from the tales he can tell of piloting personal planes on night flights to Mexico, to when he sold Las Vegas hotelier Steve Wynn the rights to the name The Mirage, to the time a man paid him $100,000 a month for 12 months for an option to acquire Mayer’s Vegas hotel—and then the FBI knocked on the door to check out the would-be buyer.
“I’ve had a pretty good career,” says the 90-year-old Mayer, who’s our Business Person of the Year in the hospitality sector.
Family Business
He’s “ex-boss” of the Mayer Corp., and its patriarch. His son Robert Mayer Jr., whom his dad calls R.J., is chairman and chief executive; grandson Robert Mayer III is president.
“There is a Bob the fourth,” Mayer says. “But he’s in Little League.”
Mayer’s son Michael and his daughter, Linda Howit, aren’t involved in the business.
The company has about 1,000 workers.
“One employee per room is about right for hotel companies,” Mayer says.
He holds the hotels—all of the Hilton and half of the Hyatt, the latter of which is co-owned with affiliates of the Pritzker family —through a family trust. The Pritzkers founded what is now Hyatt Hotels Corp. in Chicago.
The properties face Pacific Coast Highway on about 25 acres owned by the city and leased by Mayer affiliates.
Real Estate
Mayer bought the land rights at an auction in 1978. Others bid on “a small hotel, mobile home park, and pitch-and-putt golf course” in disrepair; he saw “a fabulous piece of property” a hundred yards from the beach.
The Hilton opened in 1990, the Hyatt in 2003.
“It took a lot longer than I thought it would” to work with the city and state agencies to build the hotels.
“The Coastal Commission is a great jurisdiction but difficult to please,” he says.
Another 25 acres Mayer once held behind the hotels was sold several decades ago for residential development.
Mayer’s companies developed more than 25,000 homes in Southern California from 1956 through the 1990s—apartments, condos, retirement homes, and single-family home communities.
A Mayer Corp. predecessor received honors at the Business Journal’s Family Owned Business Awards in 2006.
The elder Mayer has been handing off responsibilities since then.
“R.J. is responsible for the new tower,” he says. “The kids run the business—I’m semiretired.”
Mayer keeps a hand in land and investments through Mayer Devco LLC, which he and his wife, Maya, run from their home in Newport Coast.
Storied Life
Maya is his third wife; they married in 2006.
“She’s invaluable,” says Mayer, who stands a bit above five feet.
“I used to be 6-foot-6,” he quips, but says six decades of development efforts have taken their toll.
He arrived for a recent visit to the Business Journal wearing a houndstooth jacket, blue-striped dress shirt, all-black Nike dress sneakers, a gold wedding band with several rows of tiny diamonds—and a constant smile.
His day planner is filled with appointments—tomorrow’s stories, and perhaps a second volume: Mayer’s tales through 2008—from Las Vegas to Mexico to Orange County in-between—are recounted in a book, “Without Risk There’s No Reward.”
“I wrote that for the grandkids and great-grandkids,” he says. “So they’d know what Grandpa Bob did when he was able to do it.”
