Conventional wisdom says “look before you leap.”
Call them unconventional.
Christine and Jerry Van Rooy met at California State University-Long Beach, tied the knot in 2006, and launched Santa Ana-based Vanrooy Design LLC two years later.
As colleagues and friends were laid off across real estate-oriented industries, the duo then decided on risk fueled by new opportunity: they quit their jobs and hung out a shingle.
Jerry had been working in construction; Christine was with an OC design firm counting clients among “restaurant chains, like California Pizza Kitchen and Yard House,” she said.
The goal: creative projects less-hindered by big-name brand restraints.
Personality
The couple sought “a more personal relationship” with clients, Christine told the Business Journal. An East Coast restaurant called the Dunes commissioned one of the first efforts by the new venture, a renovation of the 30-year-old, family-owned eatery.
They’ve also worked on Harley in Laguna Beach by former Haven Gastropub co-owner Greg Daniels.
Ongoing work has come from Baja Sharkeez Corp.—co-founded by Ron Newman of Red Onion restaurants fame and his son Greg—based in Hermosa Beach and with five coastal locations including in Huntington and Newport Beach.
The Van Rooys added hotel assignments in 2013.
Jerry and Christine, now in their 40s, have five employees, up to a dozen projects at a time, a firm with sales in the millions and 20% year-over-year growth, and a 4-year-old daughter.
Restaurants and hotels may seem odd sectors to enter to avoid big-name brands; service providers are as chained-up as any industry. Hotels are infamous for PIPs—property improvement plans—required of owners and both business areas seek consistent looks and feels for their offerings.
Serendipity
But Christine and Jerry debuted their design house just as “boutique” became a hotel buzzword and an indie vibe showed its profitability legs, even as foodies from fast casual to fusion hijacked significant portions of restaurants.
The 1980s and ’90s experience economy—designing spaces and running enterprises geared to lifestyles over mere commodity exchange—morphed into a full-fledged “innovation and social design” approach. This now connects to design psychology principles that seek to consider spaces based on how they’ll be used by people, employees or visitors. Vanrooy Design projects also highlight natural elements—lighting and layout, for instance—so restaurant patrons or hotel guests feel “like they want to stay forever.”
More happy happenstance came in the form of phone calls.
Greg Newman’s mentioning of the couple to a frat brother added to the restaurant side, nabbing Vanrooy Design work for several locations of sandwich eatery Mendocino Farms.
The hotel portion picked up when the couple, traveling in Geneva at the time, got a call from the Marriott family—yes, that one—to create a new restaurant at one of several dozen properties owned by family members through a trust. A successful effort there got them design work on the renovation of the entire hotel.
“That was one of the luckiest breaks we’ve had,” Christine said.
Then came another: a Marriott family staffer recommended the firm to a big buyer of hotels in several states.
Hospitality
The firm is now set to complete for them one of its largest projects so far as part of the $23 million redo of Westin Long Beach.
The 460-room Westin, on Ocean Boulevard, across from the Long Beach Convention Center and near U.S. government offices, was bought by Boston investors Rockpoint Group LLC and New York hotel operator Highgate Hotels LP in September 2017 for $85 million.
A few months earlier, Highgate partnered with Morgan Stanley to pay $57 million for the 109-room Pacific Edge hotel in Laguna Beach; a year later it acquired the 826-room Westin Las Vegas with Cerberus Capital for about $196 million. Trade and media reports peg Highgate’s hotel buying at more than $1 billion over the last decade—including a half-dozen prominent New York properties and totaling about 30,000 hotel rooms.
The Long Beach work includes refurbished guest rooms, custom art installations, a 110-seat restaurant, Navy Proof Food & Spirits; and a new lobby with white marble and oak finishes, neutral colors and brass lighting elements for “a refined interior that feels both energetic and calming,” Jerry said.
Elements continue to include industry moves toward blending indoor and outdoor spaces and using brighter colors and natural lighting, such as the addition of a sun-filled atrium at the Westin.
And the personalized serendipity continues: Jerry and Christine are working on the renovation at Westin Las Vegas.
