A hot streak of hotel development will bring about 100,000 square feet of event space spread over at least 17 projects in Orange County by the end of 2017.
• Destination marketer Visit Anaheim lists six hotels to be built, accounting for a total of 24,000 square feet of event space;
• Another half-dozen hotels are planned or in process in Irvine, including about 20,000 square feet of meeting space;
• Four new hotels are planned for the city of Buena Park, good for another 20,000 square feet of meeting space;
• Paséa Hotel & Spa in Huntington Beach is scheduled to open in June with 35,000 square feet.
The projects represent the biggest chunk of hotel development in the county since before the Great Recession.
“We’re really watching a huge spike in new projects,” said Alan Reay, a hotel consultant and president of Atlas Hospitality Group in Irvine. “Projects come to life, and everyone starts building at the same time.”
There might be even more construction than there is if it weren’t for certain market specifics.
“Orange County is both desirable and difficult” for development said Harry Pflueger, president of Maxim Hotel Brokerage in Newport Beach, referring to regulatory hurdles.
New hotels with more meeting space open soon at projects deeply keyed into events bookings.
At the Door
Great Wolf Lodge Southern California opens Feb. 19 in Garden Grove, bringing with it 21,000 square feet of meeting space, along with its signature indoor water park.
Don’t laugh, but Wisconsin-based Great Wolf Resorts has 13 U.S. properties—and adult groups do get in on the fun via “Water Park After Dark,” said Rhonda Khabir, corporate sales director.
It’s available to meeting planners looking to jazz up a session.
Groups can book a night in advance and use it for team building and fun.
Great Wolf properties attract a core customer base of families with younger children, so the conference facilities in Garden Grove will have their own floor and be in a separate building from the guest rooms.
The luxury Paséa Hotel & Spa, scheduled to open by June, had to put its hotel and meeting space on limited available land.
“We only had about four acres to work with, so it was tightly designed,” said Kory Kramer, chief investment officer at Pacific Hospitality Group, which is co-developing Paséa with Newport Beach-based R.D. Olson Development.
Kramer said two floors of support space—housekeeping and the laundry, for example—are underground, topped by guest floors and the lobby. The property is aimed at “high-end leisure and large corporate and group events.”
Blending room revenue and event sales requires “the right ratio” of rooms to meeting area, with “efficiency of space”—connected event offerings that include a lawn, ballroom, and “prefunction flex-space” leading to both.
Next Year
Construction on a “lifestyle” hotel under the Marriott name starts in Irvine in March with a fall 2017 opening planned, said Mike Chavez, senior project manager for R.D. Olson, which is developing the project.
It’s “right across the street from (the) Taco Bell” headquarters and just off the I-5 (Santa Ana) in the Irvine Spectrum area.
The hotel includes a 5,000-square-foot ballroom that can be divided into two meeting rooms if needed; a 6,800-square-foot lawn; and a 1,500-square-foot prefunction area that opens onto both of the larger spaces —similar to the Paséa setup.
Two other meeting spaces—a boardroom of about 500 square feet and a 2,000-square-foot room that can be split in half—bring the hotel’s total space to just less than 16,000 square feet.
Chavez pointed out an interesting lawn element “for guests to have fun with,” a nearly life-sized chessboard—it covers about 240 square feet—with pieces 3 to 4 feet high.
Reboot
Some new meeting spaces include remakes of the old.
A $40 million renovation of rooms, public spaces and meeting facilities at St. Regis Monarch Beach Resort in Dana Point that started last January is scheduled to conclude by May and includes events-focused areas.
• The former Motif restaurant gets two private dining rooms when it reopens as Aveo Table & Bar;
• Several large pillars were removed from a 12,000-square-foot lawn to eliminate ocean view obstruction;
• The resort’s swimming pool was gutted for a rebuild and will get 12 cabanas and a restaurant called Sombra;
“We’re redoing the entire pool area,” said Chris White, Southern California area sales and marketing director for Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc., which runs the resort.
He said the new space can accommodate outdoor groups and receptions of 50 to 60 people.
White, who handles sales for six Starwood properties in Southern California, said the two dining rooms at Aveo can host up to about 20 to 25 people each and that the slightly larger lawn attracts “welcome receptions and outdoor dinners.”
A second outdoor area called the South Botanical Lawn held events prior to the renovation. “We’ve had huge tents, 15,000 to 20,000 square feet,” White said, though “accessing the space wasn’t easy.”
So the St. Regis added a staircase that connected the lawn to the hotel.
White said it’s the first public spaces renovation of this scale since the resort was built 15 years ago.
“We want to provide multiple spaces, private spaces, and unique experiences. To keep creating space and flexibility, you have to spend money.”
