Hotel Complex Near Oceanside Harbor Is OKd

Hoping to reignite Oceanside’s smoldering tourism industry, the City Council approved a development agreement Tuesday for a 264-room hotel on a prime 10-acre parcel near the municipal harbor.

The council, sitting as the city’s community development commission, agreed unanimously to go forward with the $25-million hotel, despite opposition from a group planning a rival hotel complex.

Under the agreement, City Equities-Oceanside Ltd., project developers, will build a Raddisson hotel that will include conference facilities, restaurants, pools and tennis courts. In addition, a satellite facility with 32 suites, a restaurant and bar, swimming pool and upgraded boat dock will be built on a separate parcel nearby.

The city’s redevelopment agency will loan the developer about $1.5 million to grade the hotel site, which sits on a slope overlooking the San Luis Rey River and the Pacific Ocean, and another $3.5 million will go to purchase the property. In exchange, redevelopment officials estimate the city will get more than $9.5 million in property taxes and more than $500,000 a year in hotel bed taxes.

City officials hope that the hotel, when built, can serve as a catalyst to lure more tourists to the city. Although Oceanside once was considered a prime summertime destination, the city has been tattooed in recent decades with an image as a honky-tonk town catering to Marines from nearby Camp Pendleton.

While redevelopment officials were upbeat about the project, a landowner hoping to build a hotel elsewhere in the city complained that Oceanside is simply not big enough for two large facilities and urged the council to hold off its approval.

Nick Banche, an attorney representing downtown landowner James Keenan, said his client wants to build a hotel along two oceanfront blocks at the foot of the municipal pier. Banche said Keenan would prefer to see a study done to determine if Oceanside could accommodate two first-class hotels in the downtown area.

But officials with the city’s redevelopment agency, which put together the deal with City Equities-Oceanside Ltd., said they felt the area could benefit from more than one complex.

After more than three hours of discussion, the council agreed.

“I think there’s room for both projects,” Councilman Sam Williamson said. “I’d just like to say full-speed ahead.”

Only Councilwoman Lucy Chavez voiced a note of caution, saying that approval of a hotel by the harbor will do little to curb blight in downtown Oceanside, which is across the river.

“I hope we can work just as sincerely with anyone wanting to develop in the pier area,” Chavez said. “I don’t want to dismiss the fact that we still have downtown Oceanside and that’s where we really need a catalyst.”