Fullerton : Hotel Plans Advance for Cal State Fullerton

A hotel and conference center at Cal State Fullerton--the first commercial hotel on a public university campus in California--moved one step closer to reality this week.

The city’s Planning Commission on Wednesday approved plans for a 224-room Marriott Hotel, which university officials hope will pay for a new campus football and baseball complex.

The proposal for the six-story hotel, on what is now a student parking lot, will be considered by the City Council on Oct. 23, Fullerton associate planner Bob S. Linnell said Thursday.

If approved, the hotel at Nutwood Avenue and the Orange Freeway would partially finance a new sports complex at the university.

A similar proposal hit numerous snags three years ago when a group of students and a homeowner filed suit to block the project.

The group argued that the city should not have approved the project without an environmental impact report assessing noise, traffic and parking problems that the hotel might generate. The state Court of Appeal ruled against the Coalition for Student Action, saying that it had filed the suit improperly because it did not clearly specify its objections during administrative hearings.

Then, last year, a developer pulled out of an agreement to build the hotel and conference center. RJS Development Inc. of Houston bailed out of the $15-million project because “the hotel market in Orange County is overbuilt,” according to a June 11, 1985, letter from the company’s president, Russell J. Simon.

Fullerton officials argued that their market was different from that of nearby Anaheim and the area surrounding John Wayne Airport, both of which have many hotels and motels.

Linnell said this latest plan did not encounter the same protests that plagued the previous project. And in anticipation of scrapping 525 parking spaces to build the hotel, the city has built two parking lots providing at least the same number of spaces, he said.