Plans for Major Luxury Hotel in Laguna Niquel Seen as Turning Monarch Beach Into Resort Area

Plans for a major luxury hotel near the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Laguna Niguel could turn the Monarch Beach area into a “destination resort” competitive with Hawaii, Palm Springs and Scottsdale, Ariz., a chief analyst with the international accounting firm Laventhol & Horwath said Saturday.

Honolulu developer Christopher B. Hemmeter and the Stein-Brief Group, developers of Monarch Beach, will soon announce plans for the 1,100-room, $250-million hotel to be completed within five years, according to a source close to the project.

An official from Stein-Brief declined to comment Saturday. Officials from the Hemmeter Corp. could not be reached.

“A second major resort hotel down there will be synergistic,” said David Kinkade, a chief hotel analyst with the Costa Mesa office of Laventhol & Horwath. “They’re going to be competing but mutually supportive in their marketing efforts.”

If completed, the hotel would continue a trend of pricey new resorts along the county’s southern coast. Earlier this month, Southmark Pacific Corp. announced that the Dana Point Royce Resort Hotel--a 350-room, $50-million project under construction in Dana Point--was being taken over by members of the Slatkin family of Beverly Hills, former operators of the Beverly Hills Hotel.

Thomas Slatkin said at the time that the new hotel, with rooms priced from $140 to $900 a night, would be characterized by “casual elegance” and would be less formal than the Ritz Carlton.

The plan actually may include two hotels, a larger Hyatt-Regency or Hilton type and a smaller, more exclusive hotel nearby, with a man-made lake or lagoon in the complex.

Hemmeter has developed several major hotel projects in Hawaii, Kinkade said. Like the others, the proposed Monarch Beach hotel would probably be operated by a national hotel chain, he said.