O. C. BUSINESS PLUS : Ritz-Carlton to Finance, Manage Luxury Resort : Hotels: Laguna Beach site won’t bear the famous name; 225 rooms, 50 bungalows are planned.
Adding a third property to its list of Orange County hotels, Ritz-Carlton Hotel Co. has agreed to finance and manage a Craftsman-style luxury resort to be built on a Laguna Beach coastal bluff, officials said Thursday.
Ritz-Carlton emerged as the partner of developer Vestar-Athens Group after a previous financing deal collapsed, said Kenneth C. Frank, Laguna Beach’s city manager.
The arrangement also displaces Rosewood Hotels and Resorts of Dallas as the operator of the hotel. Rosewood declined to comment, and officials at Vestar-Athens and Ritz-Carlton headquarters couldn’t be reached.
The hotel will include about 225 rooms in a main structure and 50 in outlying bungalows, with 17 large lots for single-family homes and a 14-unit condominium complex.
The project on the site of the former Treasure Island trailer park is on track to become the first of numerous proposed luxury hotels along the Southern California coast. After a divisive fight over environmental issues, Laguna Beach voters approved the project in April, and the City Council gave its final blessing Tuesday night to the development agreement.
The resort will be the second hotel operated by Ritz-Carlton that does not bear the name or formal look associated with the Atlanta company. The first was the Hotel Arts Barcelona in Spain, a 44-story tower of contemporary design. Ritz-Carlton vice president Phil Keb told the City Council the chain expects to add others.
The location is less than four miles from the Ritz-Carlton in Dana Point, which opened in 1984 as the chain’s first resort hotel, and 20 miles from Park Place in Irvine, where a new Ritz-Carlton is to open in December 2000.
Ritz-Carlton is a subsidiary of Marriott International Inc., the world’s biggest hotel operator and franchiser--and a source of ready funds at a time when resort financing has become more difficult because of rising rates and concerns about overdevelopment.
Ritz-Carlton officials have said previously that they believe Orange County can support two of their own hotels. The 393-room Ritz-Carlton in Dana Point caters to weekend getaway clients and business groups, while the 301-room Ritz-Carlton Irvine is being designed primarily to house travelers visiting the county on business.
The cost of developing the Laguna Beach hotel hasn’t been disclosed.
Detailed drawings of the project are expected to be available for public examination by Monday, with design-review hearings scheduled to begin Sept. 18, Frank said.
