In the Pink: Omni Guests Enjoy Debut Amid Clatter
The 450-room, $59-million Omni San Diego Hotel opened for business Thursday amid the clatter and dust of last-minute construction.
A landmark of downtown redevelopment, the pastel pink and orange building welcomed the U.S. ambassador to Ecuador, Fernando Rondon, and his wife, Marian, as its first paying guests.
With much less fanfare, the Rondons had spent the previous two nights as the Omni’s unofficial, non-paying guests. The Omni had failed to notify them that its opening had been postponed two days because of construction delays.
When the Rondons showed up Tuesday night, they found the 16-story hotel empty, darkened and locked up.
“The security people let us in and gave us a room for free,” said Rondon, who is in San Diego on vacation.
Thursday, however, the Rondons and half a dozen other guests paid the full $79-a-night weekday fee, an introductory discount (from the published $115- to $170-a-night rates) designed to build guest traffic. Weekend rates at the luxury-class hotel through Dec. 31 are even cheaper, starting at $59 per night.
The Rondons and a few other guests drank champagne served by hotel manager William Torresala, who has admitted that the hotel’s business will be severely hurt by the loss of delegate traffic caused by the two-year delay in the completion of the San Diego convention center. Still, Torresala expects the Omni’s occupancy rate to reach 70% by year’s end.
Another paying guest was Long Beach accountant Mark Wilkersen, who, in town on business, said he had no idea the Omni was opening this week when he booked his reservation.
“I was going to complain about the noise and the carpets not being down, but then I saw the room and it really is beautiful,” Wilkersen said.
Officials at the Centre City Development Corp.--which helped finance the hotel by giving builder Py-Vavra Development of Milwaukee incentives on the land--praised hotel architect Robert Keck and consultant Jon Jerde for creating a harmonious adjunct to Horton Plaza next door.
“I think it’s the nicest building down here, not including Horton Plaza,” CCDC senior planner Al Mercer said. “CCDC is very pleased with it. It fits right in with the shopping center, and it’s not a glass box.”
The hotel also is not quite finished. Only six floors, totaling 180 rooms, are open for guests, and the 90-foot plexiglass obelisk by New Mexico sculptor Luis Jimenez that will adorn the hotel’s circular courtyard will not be installed until November. And not all of the paving stones are in place on the floor of the hotel’s porte-cochere, the arched passageway linking the hotel courtyard with 1st Avenue.
But the hotel’s opening means the last element of the Horton Plaza redevelopment project is finally in place, 15 years after the City Council first embraced the idea of rejuvenating the decaying south-of-Broadway area.
The Omni San Diego is the first hotel that the 39-hotel chain has opened west of the Mississippi River. Omni, a subsidiary of Aer Lingus, the Irish national airline, plans to build hotels in the Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle areas over the next few years.
