Irvine Co. Hotel Unit Now a Separate Entity

The Irvine Co. is transforming its hotel division into a semi-autonomous operating division called the Irvine Hotel Co. “to heighten its stature” in the competitive hotel market in Orange County, company President Thomas H. Nielsen said Wednesday.

Irvine Co. officials have hired James T. Kelley, 47, a senior vice president of the Chicago-based Hyatt Development Corp. subsidiary of Hyatt Corp., to serve as president of their new company.

Kelley will take over Dec. 2 from Sam Van Landingham, who had been acting head of the division for four months and who will return to his duties as vice president of the company’s office division.

Meantime, Valentine Smith, senior director under Van Landingham in the hotel development division, is leaving the company Dec. 6. Smith, 57, acknowledged that there had been “differences” between him and company Chairman Donald L. Bren, but he would not elaborate. Instead, he praised both Bren and the company.

For the last five years, Kelley has been responsible for site selection, planning, design, and construction or renovation of more than 20 Hyatt hotels, including those in Long Beach, Monterey, Santa Barbara and Burlingame.

Nielsen said Kelley, with experience in the real estate development business, will head plans for a “world-class” resort-hotel complex along the Irvine Coast, a project expected to begin within the next few years. Kelley also will supervise development of a number of hotels on other Irvine Co. properties, including a 250-room facility soon to be constructed at University Town Center in Irvine.

Kelley also will oversee the company’s two existing hotel projects, the 14-story, 550-room Irvine Hilton Hotel and the 319-room luxury Four Seasons Hotel in Newport Beach, which is expected to open in May.

The hotel division is the fifth Irvine Co. division to be spun off into a separate company.

Smith, who came to the Irvine Co. in December, 1983, from a similar post with the owners of the Grand Old Opry and the Opryland Hotel in Nashville, had responsibilities that included overseeing the completion of the Irvine Hilton and the start of the Four Seasons.

He said he will return to the Grand Old Opry theme park, which includes the Opryland Hotel. He had worked for the owners of the Grand Old Opry for 29 years before joining the Irvine Co. Smith said that in Nashville he will oversee an expansion of the theme park and a $70-million, 700-room addition to the hotel.

“All the people I worked with in Opryland are still there, and they kept asking me to come back,” he said. “I kept saying no to them, and they kept sweetening the pot.”

He said his two years with the Irvine Co. has been a “rewarding and educational experience” and that he “won’t like leaving the Newport Beach area.”