County Authorizes Talks on Marina del Rey Hotel Plan

Los Angeles County supervisors Tuesday moved toward handing long-term control of a chunk of Marina del Rey to a company controlled by the brother-in-law of the king of Saudi Arabia, an investor who’s had some marina ventures end in bankruptcy.

Sheik Abdul Aziz al-Ibrahim secretly bought into the marina in the late 1980s when, through a network of shell corporations stretching from Century City to the Caribbean to Europe, he entered a partnership with local developer Abraham Lurie.

That partnership ended in an acrimonious dispute in Bankruptcy Court. After the sheik won control of all eight properties from Lurie, an investment bank ultimately foreclosed on six of them, leaving the sheik with only two hotels, which the county says he has run well. One of them is at the heart of an ambitious county plan to transform the marina into a high-rise resort district that the Board of Supervisors green-lighted Tuesday.

The sheik proposes to tear down the Marina International Hotel and replace it with a 20-story luxury hotel, possibly under Starwood Corp.’s top-end W brand. To spur the redevelopment, the county will have to extend the sheik’s current lease on the public land under that hotel by as many as 39 years.

Officials at the county Department of Beaches and Harbors, which manages the marina, said the sheik has been an exemplary landlord on his remaining two properties. But they added that the International hotel badly needs upgrading.

“It’s a hotel that’s rundown and really needs redoing,” said attorney Richard Volpert, who negotiates marina leases for the county.

Supervisors on Tuesday authorized county staff to enter negotiations with the sheik’s company, MGC, and five other entities seeking to redevelop the area around Mother’s Beach into a resort community. It will be the last chunk of a massive redevelopment of Marina del Rey into a high-rise shopping and entertainment district to compete with the Playa Vista development immediately to the south.

More than 20 projects are in the pipeline and construction could begin in the next three years, county officials said.

The goal, Beaches and Harbor Director Stan Wisniewski said, “is to make Marina del Rey much more convenient, user- and visitor-friendly.” The developments under negotiation in the Mother’s Beach area “turns Marina del Rey into a hotel destination,” he said.

The supervisors’ action Tuesday permits Beaches and Harbor officials to negotiate terms and conditions of projects on nine properties. The board will then have to approve each development and lease extension. Projects also will have to go to the state Coastal Commission.

The nine projects that supervisors backed Tuesday include three Marriott hotels with a total of 535 rooms, a larger hotel to replace the Best Western Jamaica Inn, 780 apartments on Via Marina, and the redevelopment of the sheik’s hotel from a 135-room operation to a 276-room high-rise.

Susan Zimmerman, an attorney for the MGC subsidiary that operates the sheik’s remaining marina properties, said the organization would be a reliable partner for the county. “I believe it’s a safe and stable investment,” she said.

She said the sheik had surrendered the six other marina properties during the 1997 bankruptcy as a “business decision.”

Roger Moliere of the Beaches and Harbor Department said that the sheik’s bankruptcy actions did not deprive anyone of income and that the properties have since been resold to new developers.

Supervisor Don Knabe, whose district includes the marina, noted that the billionaire “has the personal wealth to do anything or probably buy the whole marina.”

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Beach Development Los Angeles County supervisors approved having county staff enter negotiations with a company named MGC, controlled by the brother-in-law of the king of Saudi Arabia, and five other companies seeking to redevelop the area around Mother’s Beach.

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Developer Project 1. MGC Marina del Rey Int’l Hotel 2. Marriott International Hotel 3. Gold Coast Apartments Apartments 4. Marina del Rey Investors Hotel renovation, addition 5. Marriott International Hotel 6. Marriott International Hotel 7. Gold Coast West Retail, office and public space 8. Del Rey Shores, Del Rey Shores North Apartments 9. Del Rey Shores Joint Venture Storage facility

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Source: Los Angeles County