Heart of Riverside ‘Held Hostage’ With Delay in Mission Inn Reopening : Landmark: The historic hotel was repossessed during a five-year renovation and the bank is seeking a buyer.

Smog obscures the mountain views and developers have uprooted most of the orange groves, but progress has spared at least one enduring emblem of Riverside’s past--the whimsical, beloved establishment known as the Mission Inn.

Sprawled across a full square block in the heart of downtown, the eclectic 87-year-old hotel has for decades been not only a magnet for rich and famous visitors but a cherished meeting, eating and shopping hub for the local populace as well.

“It is our city’s No. 1 landmark,” said Art Pick, president of the Riverside Chamber of Commerce and a former city councilman. “It has a charm, architectural style and ambience that are irresistible . . . and truly felt throughout town.”

In 1985, the badly deteriorated inn closed for renovations amid a mood of optimistic anticipation. A three-year rehabilitation, its owners and city officials pledged at the time, would deliver a rejuvenated property guaranteed to revive the community’s flagging downtown.

But a half-decade has passed, and Riverside is still waiting for the rebirth. The inn’s owner went bankrupt in 1988, and the property was seized by Chemical Bank of New York. Reluctant to enter the hotel business, the bank is aggressively peddling its unusual property, but has had no luck.

Now, encircled by a chain-link fence and posted with no trespassing signs, the historic inn sits entirely restored but still shuttered and silent.

The consequences have been painful. An assortment of merchants who banked on the hotel’s renaissance and opened shops downtown have failed or relocated, while some who remain are struggling.

Many residents have lost the habit of shopping downtown, while a wait-and-see attitude among jittery property owners has left the center city area pockmarked by large, vacant structures.

It is, as one local business owner remarked, as if the rest of downtown Riverside has been “held hostage” by the fate of one building.

“The downtown is a wonderful place, but when the Mission Inn closed, it was like the spirit just faded right out,” said Lanette Bodiford, who owns a plant shop on Main Street, about 100 yards from the inn. “People keep hanging on and hanging on, but this is life and death for us. This can’t continue.”

City redevelopment officials have been pressing forward with a slate of downtown residential and office projects, but they are equally impatient for the inn’s reemergence.

“The cornerstone of the downtown is the Mission Inn,” said development director Margueretta Gulati. “It puts Riverside on the map. . . . There are many exciting things happening downtown, but for everything to come together, the reopening of the inn is absolutely critical.”

Chemical Bank insists relief is near. The $45-million renovation is complete--there are even linens on the beds in some of its 240 rooms--and spokeswoman Joyce Oberdorf said the bank is negotiating “pretty seriously” with one prospective buyer.

She declined to identify the would-be purchaser, but city officials said a Japanese investment group is the leading prospect. A major issue is the buyer’s desire for an inn-affiliated golf course, and the city has assisted in the hunt for possible sites.

The recession and the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, however, have combined to toss a wild card into the negotiations, something Oberdorf characterized as “a hesitancy to make a long-term commitment.” To entice suitors, Chemical has lifted its $28-million minimum on offers for the inn and indicated it will provide performance guarantees to the purchaser.

“We’ve said in the past we hope to have an agreement on the sale by the end of the year, and we still think that’s feasible,” Oberdorf said.

Downtown business owners--weary of promises and disappointments--aren’t marking their calendars. Al Blum, manager of a Main Street wine shop called Purple Toes, said merchants stopped “holding their breath” long ago.

“We opened in November of 1988--one month before the Mission Inn was supposed to have its grand reopening,” Blum said. “We’re still waiting.”

Purple Toes’ owners have had a license to operate a wine-tasting bar on the premises for two years. But, without the inn, Blum said there’s no incentive to open it: “Aside from the office lunch crowd, there’s really nobody around down here. It’s not even safe at night.”

Jim and Elizabeth Winner launched Aroma Cafe, a coffee roasting business and restaurant, just before the Mission Inn closed for renovations. Elizabeth Winner said the couple knew the early going would be rocky, but “we certainly didn’t expect the inn to be closed five years. It’s been a struggle.”

For Bodiford, an eight-year veteran of downtown Riverside, survival depends on installing and maintaining plants in local office buildings. Without those accounts, which bring in half the income, her Friends of Earth plant shop “would never be making it” downtown.

The history of the Mission Inn is nearly as remarkable as the building itself, full of unexpected twists and turns. The inn was built in 1903 by entrepreneur Frank Augustus Miller, whose family had run a rooming house on the site in the late 1800s. Miller, eyeing the droves of wealthy Easterners who were wintering in places such as Redlands and Pasadena, aimed to create a grand and competitive resort amid the aromatic orange blossoms of Riverside.

Beginning with the Mission Wing, Miller gradually built a hotel that Riverside’s deputy development director, Ralph Megna, calls “an architect’s Disneyland.”

There are grand arches and fake adobe walls reminiscent of the California mission style, mixed in with a replica of the St. Francis of Assisi chapel--complete with Tiffany windows, carved Belgian pews and a gold leaf altar. Spiral staircases wind up through a rotunda graced with hand-painted tiles, and balconies off some guest rooms--no two of which are alike--offer views of fountains, palm-studded courtyards and the city beyond.

In its early years, the inn’s charm was enhanced by the art, furnishings and memorabilia Miller lugged home from his many voyages around the world. The collection--now housed in a museum at the inn--includes numerous Buddhas, 800 bells and life-sized wax figurines of a Pope and his court.

“He saw the inn not just as a hotel but as an opportunity to bring culture to the hinterlands of Southern California,” said historian Michael Rounds, who is writing Miller’s biography. “So, like a William Randolph Hearst on a smaller scale, he stuffed the inn full of every imaginable thing.”

The formula seemed to work. Theodore Roosevelt was the first in a long line of former presidents to come for a stay, and Nancy and Ronald Reagan honeymooned in one of its suites. Amelia Earhart was among the Mission Inn faithful, and, in a series of rooms on the top floor known as Writer’s Row, John Steinbeck and other authors found inspiration and took up residence.

After Miller’s death in 1935, however, the inn began a slow decline. One owner auctioned off many of Miller’s treasures; another converted a portion of the inn to apartments that at one point housed students from UC Riverside.

By 1976, talk of repossession and demolition prompted the city to purchase the property and create a nonprofit group, the Mission Inn Foundation, to operate the hotel. The inn continued to decay and lose money, and in 1985, a Wisconsin company, Carley Capital Group, purchased it from the city. Soon after, the firm closed the inn to undertake an ambitious renovation.

“When it closed it was like you’d lost an old friend,” said Judith Whitfield, a lifelong Riverside resident who manages an antique store near the inn. “On the last day you could have lunch there, some friends and I got together and said farewell.”

Whitfield and other merchants, however, understood the need for the rehabilitation and patiently waited as the jackhammers and drills pried the hotel apart for seismic reinforcing and put it back together again. The restoration was impressive in its attention to detail, largely thanks to the extensive review the project received because of the inn’s status as a National Historic Landmark.

In December, 1988, just days before the scheduled gala reopening of the Omni Mission Inn, a twist of fate befell the old hotel once again. Carley Capital collapsed, and Chemical Bank assumed ownership.

Six months later, Chemical resumed construction on the inn, pledging to finish the project. But the setback left a legacy of bitter disappointment and nervousness among other downtown property owners.

George Freeman owns six buildings in central Riverside--including two across the street from the inn. He has drawn up plans to refurbish his properties, one of which is vacant, but is reluctant to proceed.

“When Carley failed, the sense of momentum that had been building downtown really fizzled,” Freeman said. “Until I see what happens with the inn and what the city plans to do to create an inviting atmosphere (downtown), I’m not prepared to commit to anything.”

Gulati acknowledged that the inn’s closure has been “frustrating for all of us who are anxious to see Riverside improve.” But she said progress has been made downtown, including the construction of a seven-story office building; the opening of the California Museum of Photography and approval of an 84-unit condominium, office and retail project adjacent to the inn.

City Councilman Ron Loveridge agreed, but said the reopening of the inn is necessary “symbolically to signal the rebirth of downtown.

“Once the inn is open for business, I believe the feeling will be somewhat electric in the community,” said Loveridge, whose ward includes the city’s downtown sector. “The hard question, of course, is when will it open?”

RIVERSIDE REDEVELOPMENT

The 87-year-old Mission Inn on Seventh Street between Main and Orange in the heart of Riverside was supposed to have been the centerpiece of a downtown renaissance. But the progress of the redevelopment has been slowed by financial problems that have delayed the inn’s opening.