Riverside Banks on Inn Renewal : Restoration of Landmark Hotel Seen Spurring Downtown Revival

When the landmark Mission Inn reopens Dec. 22 after a 3 1/2-year hiatus, this city of 203,000 expects to return to some of the glory days of yesteryear.

The adjacent Main Street pedestrian mall is being redesigned, a developer has been chosen to construct the first downtown apartment project in two decades, and an old S.H. Kress & Co. variety store on the mall is being renovated to become the California Museum of Photography, now housed at UC Riverside.

But the centerpiece of the current downtown improvement effort is the Mission Inn, properly the Omni Mission Inn, a 240-room hotel renovated and refurbished by the owner, Carley Capital Group of Madison, Wis., and operated by the Omni Hotels International chain.

The Miller family started the Mission Inn in 1876 with the predecessor Glenwood Cottages, a rooming house, but it really became something special after Frank A. Miller bought it from his family in 1880.

Starting in 1903 with the Mission Wing and ending with the Rotunda Wing, completed in 1931, Miller turned the once-modest adobe structure into a massive melange of architectural styles that occupies the city block bounded by Main, Orange, 6th and 7th streets.

After Miller’s death in 1935, the Mission Inn began a decline in the 1950s and 1960s, culminating in the city’s purchase of the hotel in 1976.

One of the few hotels in the nation on the National Register of Historic Places, the Mission Inn was purchased by Carley Capital from the city in 1985, with the idea of restoring it to its original splendor as both a hotel and a museum, according to Vicki A. Derlachter, the hotel’s marketing and sales director.

“The Mission Inn is a special place in California, a place whose presidential suite has been occupied by Presidents from Theodore Roosevelt to William Howard Taft to Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan,” Derlachter added.

The $40-million restoration has been compared to that of the California State Capitol in Sacramento and the Hearst Castle near Cambria, said Maureen McAvey, director of development at Carley Capital.

Stolte Inc., the construction firm for the Mission Inn renovation, worked on the Hearst Castle restoration, while the interior designers, A.T. Heinsbergen & Co., restored the interiors of Carnegie Hall in New York and the Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles. The architectural firm of ELS/Elbassani & Logan of San Francisco was also involved in the structural remodeling.

Financing was provided by the Chemical Bank of New York, the Riverside Redevelopment Agency and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Initially, the Inn will open 60 rooms in the Mission Wing and lunch and dinner will be available in the Spanish Dining Room and Patio. The California Lounge will also open on Dec. 22.

The Presidential Lounge will open on Jan. 5, followed by the Squire Arms on Jan. 12, according to Luis Barrios, general manager of the hotel.

Mayor Ab Brown, a 60-year resident of the city, has “never seen Riverside so alive with growth and revitalization. Everybody seems to be pulling together to help Riverside achieve its enormous potential.”

Steve Albright of Keep Riverside Ahead said his organization’s goal is to attract “companies that are not in Riverside, as contrasted with the Chamber of Commerce, which primarily works with established companies that plan to stay or expand.”

Riverside offers employers a large pool of competent workers, many of whom spend hours commuting to jobs in Orange and Los Angeles counties, Albright said. “Not only are our housing prices affordable--with prices at least half what most areas of Los Angeles and Orange counties have to offer, but so are prices for industrial and commercial real estate,” he added.

Development Director Margueretta S. Gulati would like to see more people living in downtown Riverside and more specialty stores added.

This week will see completion of an extensive renovation of Main Street between 5th and 6th streets--adjacent to the Omni Mission Inn and the public parking garage that will serve the inn and the mall.

A construction completion celebration sponsored by the city, the Riverside Redevelopment Agency, the Riverside Downtown Assn. and Main Street merchants will be held from 5 to 9 p.m. Thursday to mark completion of the mall improvements, Gulati said.

The improvements, designed by the Santa Monica-based architecture firm of Campbell & Campbell, “have been designed to enhance the pedestrian environment of this street while continuing to accommodate traffic,” according to firm partner Doug Campbell.

Also on the Main Street Mall between 5th and 6th streets, Century West Development Inc. of Santa Monica, will construct a three-story mixed-used project with 74 apartments and about 25,000 square feet of office and retail space, Gulati said. Construction will begin next year, she added.

Adjacent to the Mission Inn, this Orange Tree Plaza development will help transform the mall into the “best place to shop downtown,” she said.

John Dudzinsky of Century West said that the rents for one- and two-bedroom apartments in the courtyard-style project will range from $525 to $700 a month. The architect is de Bretteville & Polyzoides of Los Angeles.

Gulati added that the city has narrowed down to three the number of developers who would construct two office buildings: A 160,000-square-foot downtown structure across Main Street from Orange Tree Plaza to house city employees and a 150,000-square-foot one at 14th and Vine streets for the Riverside Unified School District.

Finalist Selected

The finalists are Birtcher Pacific, Laguna Niguel; Griffin Development, Santa Monica, and Starboard Development, San Diego. The winner is expected to be chosen in March, Gulati said.

Birtcher, in partnership with Statewide Developers and the city of Riverside, is the developer of the 200-acre Riverside Marketplace, on the eastern gateway to downtown, just east of the Riverside (91) Freeway. Gulati has obtained about $6 million in federal grants and loans to help finance the first phase of the project in the city’s Central Industrial Redevelopment Project area.

A 1989 start is expected on the $54-million first phase, located between 6th and 14th streets and the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe railway tracks, according to Robert M. Campbell, a general partner in the Laguna Niguel-based Birtcher firm.