Seems like an Orange County hotel is born every minute.
Recent foals include Marriott Irvine Spectrum, Garden Grove’s Great Wolf Lodge down the street from Disneyland Resort, and Paséa Hotel & Spa in Huntington Beach.
Local hotel openings slowed last year, according to Atlas Hospitality Group in Irvine—down about 47% from 2016. But 1,700 rooms are under construction—back up to 2016 levels—and 11,000 are in planning.
Current construction totals include the 600-plus room Westin Anaheim Resort next door to the 25% larger Anaheim Convention Center and the soon-to-open Lido House with rooftop bar, saltwater pool and all, in Newport Beach.
Four-diamond-level properties—including that Westin—are on the way, including one by Disney.
Amid all the hammerheads, what are midpriced hotels—long in the teeth, gray at the temples, rust on the fenders—to do?
Go West, Old Man
No problem. We can buff that right out.
Midrange operators—the $100- to $200-a-room guys, the Ramadas of the hotel world—are seeing visions, dreaming dreams, and moving as fast as the big boys, if only to keep up. They’re renovating.
Grand Legacy at the Park completed a $14 million renovation two years ago. The family-owned hotel—a former Ramada Inn, as it happens—brought Anaheim its first hotel rooftop bar, The Fifth, on Harbor Boulevard.
Others are following. There’s a new Wyndham Garden in town—another former Ramada—on Katella Avenue between Disneyland and GardenWalk. It’s open, and remaining elements of the $4 million renovation will be done next month.
Helming the project is Parkwest General Contractors, which has seen several such conversions and other renovations in recent years, and plans more.
Park Here
The company in various iterations is more than 30 years young.
“We keep reinventing ourselves,” said founder and Chief Executive Chris Hostert.
He began as “gofer to a general contractor;” built small apartment complexes and did multifamily maintenance; endured the death of one boss, recessions, and the end of a business two weeks after his honeymoon; built single-family homes; worked on bank-owned properties; did tenant improvement; built homeless shelters; and co-owned a door company.
Ed LaCivita’s resume—from apprenticeship to management, from grocery stores to custom work—brought him into Hostert’s orbit, and he joined Parkwest nine years ago as a principal.
Either can step into a project, often depending on which has the decades-long relationship with the client.
“It’s an agility,” Ed said. “Who has that knowledge? It makes the whole thing seamless.”
The duo added Craig Sullivan in 2013 to make it rain.
Sullivan’s travels include Broughton Hotels in Anaheim and Twenty Four Seven Hotels in Newport Beach. He started and runs the California Lodging Investment Conference, which is scheduled for March 8 at Hilton Irvine/Orange County Airport.
“Craig knows everyone there is to know in hotels,” Hostert said.
Parkwest has 15 workers; the Business Journal estimates its annual revenue at $12 million to $15 million.
Its offices are tucked into the back corner of an industrial park off the 91 Freeway in Anaheim.
If you find it, you were looking for it.
Refresh
The work they’ve done is everywhere.
Hostert and LaCivita have remade “restaurants, bars, offices”—including 300,000 square feet of trendy creative-office space in recent years.
The first hotel job came about 2005. It began to pick up as the industry reheated after the recession.
Ninety percent of Parkwest work today is in hotels. It “gets involved as early as possible,” Sullivan said.
It’s connected buildings, added meeting space, imported tiles from Vietnam for reimagined pools, and renovated older properties or transitioned them to new brands.
“A lot of these hotels, their PIPs are starting to come up,” Craig said, referring to the property improvement plan required by brands to bring hotels up to their standards.
Parkwest’s go-to architects include Raad Ghantous & Associates in Dana Point and Architects Orange. It does eight to 15 projects a year for “all the flags [from] 30 to 40 keys to 500-key urban conference centers.”
More specifically: Candlewood, Radisson, Holiday Inn Express, Sheraton, Marriott, Wyndham and others.
Work stretches up the West Coast.
