A former Ramada Inn across Harbor Boulevard from Disneyland Resort is scheduled to debut next month as an independent hotel after a five-year, $14 million renovation with a new name and rooftop views of nightly fireworks shows.
Co-owner Brandon Garr said the Grand Legacy at the Park pays homage to his late father, William Earl Garr Jr., who opened the Saga Inn on the site in 1974.
The elder Garr died in 2004. Brandon started working there in 1997, the year it became a Ramada.
“It’s not always easy working with your father, but the education was amazing,” he said.
The Ramada deal ended Feb. 1. Garr will save about $500,000 a year by not paying for the name.
He co-owns the hotel with his brother Duke, leases the two parcels of land on which it sits, and runs it via Garr Properties Inc.
New Look, Size, Offerings
The hotel didn’t close during renovation.
The 4-acre campus is a quad with parking and the swimming pool in the center. A back two-story building was torn down in the first phase and rebuilt with four floors. Buildings down each side later got facade facelifts and new rooms.
The front structure facing Disneyland is the final piece, with six two-room suites, three three-room suites and six ground-floor tenants offering theme park tickets and standard tourist food—pizza, tacos, ice cream—but at a higher level in line with the hotel’s upgrade.
The food purveyors include a location of Yorba Linda-based Creamistry and a mom-and-pop pizza shop called Pizzatarian.
The crown of the $6 million main building is a 5,000-square-foot rooftop restaurant and bar above the fourth floor.
The space opens first for hotel guests as Garr seeks city approval to bring in the public. He plans a “family-friendly [area with] movie nights and views of the fireworks,” with the restaurant offering a “small bites” menu and drinks.
Boost in Standing
Grand Legacy tops out at 199 rooms—up from 186 before work began.
Garr said rates have risen 7% to 10% annually since the recession due to proximity to Disney, an improving hotel market and the renovated rooms.
“Long-term, we needed this (upgrade),” he said, to modernize the hotel and boost its local standing.
People confused Garr’s Ramada with other similar sites. There are seven other Ramada properties in Orange County, including three from Ball Road to the Anaheim Convention Center, each within a couple of miles of Grand Legacy.
Local Ramada pricing averages $100, according to property websites. Garr’s rates now run $139 to $199 for rooms and about double that for suites.
Ramada is owned by Wyndham Worldwide Corp. in Parsippany, N.J., and at first Garr thought a renovated hotel could stay in the same system under a higher-end flag—a Wyndham Garden or a “soft brand” with a more “indie” flavor.
“We couldn’t convince them” to change it, he said.
Checked Out
The hotel was Ramada Maingate at the Park for 19 years. Garr got opt-outs in the new contract when the first 15-year license ended in 2012, and in August 2015 he decided to go solo.
He calls the renovation “the most stressful thing I’ve ever done.”
At first he was unable to get funding.
“They said, ‘You’re a Ramada, and you’re going to do a $14 million renovation?’” Garr recalled.
He paid a third of that amount out-of-pocket to finish the first phase and start the second phase. The financial commitment, plus cash flow from the first new rooms, nabbed financing for the rest of the work.
Garr employed about 55 before work began and said he plans to hit 110 when the new facilities are fully staffed.
He has three children between the ages of 14 and 26, so a third generation may take over operations one day. Garr said it’s also possible the now-indie operator would become a small chain of its own under the Grand Legacy flag.
General Manager Marshall Weinstein “wants to be a regional manager, and I told him we’d work on that.”
