Remnants of Hotel’s Faded Past to Pay for Its Face Lift

Leonard W. Glass, the new co-owner of the Hotel San Diego, is a former plastic surgeon. Before retiring in 1981, he did thousands of face lifts. And now he’s involved in the face lift of a 75-year-old downtown landmark.

What’s being lifted are hundreds of furnishings that look as though they could fill the living room of Citizen Kane or fit right in at San Simeon: a canopy bed used on the set of a Hollywood movie, pedestals, antique lamps laden with gilt, wall mirrors, beds, benches, sofas, stools . . . and more.

Glass and his partner, Ray Fruscella, want a whole new look for the old hotel. That means “clean, contemporary” furniture suggesting a “modern ambiance.” Oh, sure, the oak confessional from an Irish church will remain--it’s the hotel’s phone booth and what Glass calls a lobby “mainstay.” But by Sunday, hundreds of other pieces will be gone for good. Or at least that’s his hope.

Items are being appraised by professional antique and art dealer James D. McDonald, who specializes in estate-sale liquidations. The items won’t be auctioned--they’ll be priced by McDonald, then sold at public sessions scheduled from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.

To the cost-conscious buyer, McDonald admitted Sunday might be the better “bargaining” day. He’ll try to unload everything by Monday, even if it means trimming a few pennies off the price.

Many of the items, which span several periods (art deco, Victorian, Edwardian and golden oak) were first purchased by the late Vincent Miranda, who once owned the hotel and a fleet of pornographic theaters. Miranda

was a vintage-movie buff, having bought hundreds of props, set pieces and wickedly strange antiques from MGM and other Hollywood studios. Much of the stuff McDonald will try to sell was once part of Miranda’s private collection. They include photographs, costumes and a bed that Glass thinks was used in the film “Cleopatra,” starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.

Burton and Taylor never stayed at the hotel, on Broadway between State and Union streets--but plenty of other stars have, including Gloria Swanson, Mary Pickford, Cecil B. DeMille, Liberace and Jackie Coogan. Albert Einstein was also a guest.

Some of the pieces being sold are from rooms where the big names stayed. They include tables, lamps, chairs, dressers, and robes painted black, pink and silver that look like something Liberace might have worn, if he had ever been crowned heavyweight champ. Another item is the big neon sign from the old Silver Dollar bar that once clung to the back of the hotel alley like a cat that never quite belonged. Scores of paintings, mostly of naked women, will also be sold.

“Those were in the Silver Dollar,” Glass said. “Where else? Forty years ago, they had to have been considered pornographic. Now they’re as tame as kittens.”

Western Sun Hotels, co-owned by Glass and Fruscella, bought the Hotel San Diego in August. Western Sun owns other hotel-motels, sprinkled throughout the Western states. Many, such as the Travelator downtown that is now a Howard Johnson’s, are Western Sun reclamation projects.

Glass’ hope for Hotel San Diego (and for the Howard Johnson’s, for that matter) is that a moderately priced hotel will flourish in the shadow of the new convention center, Horton Plaza and high-priced luxury hotels that charge, in his words, “so much more--too much.”

He said a top-price room for the Hotel San Diego--with renovation targeted for completion by Super Bowl week in late January--will be $55 a night. Many of the new hotels charge $85 a night or more.

Glass and Fruscella are spending $2.3 million for renovation. They’re planning to open a disco playing ‘50s music on one of the upper floors and have it ready by Super Bowl time. They’ve even painted the hotel exterior two-tone gray, scrapping its original black, which McDonald called “hideous--I can’t believe they ever did that. It looked horrible.”

Glass plans to tear down the old warehouse in back--the site of this weekend’s sale--and put in a 300,000-square-foot high-rise office building full of shops and even more hotel rooms.

But first, all of that “funky stuff” has to be sold, with proceeds going to renovation.

McDonald said one woman, a fan of the hotel, particularly Room 216, wants to buy all of the items from that room and re-create it in her own house. Somebody else wants the piano from Room 264. McDonald called that “the high-rollers’ suite.”

“You never know who’s going to show up at these things,” he said. “I’m sure we’ll have a line out front Saturday morning. You might see a guy at the front of the line who wants to spend $2, nothing more, and right behind him a guy who wants to spend thousands. It’s the craziest thing. You just never know.”

Glass said he hired McDonald after watching him work at a La Jolla estate sale.

“It was this little-bitty, dumpy old house full of nothing but absolute trash,” Glass said. “There he was, getting people to buy that stuff, and pay a lot! Amazing. I knew then he was my man for the job.”