Atlas in the news
Surge in Hotel Renovations Hits Meetings, Events
Orange County Business Journal 01/29/18 Surge in Hotel Renovations Hits Meetings, Events From New Towers to New Tastes, Hotels Spruce Up By Paul Hughes https://www.ocbj.com/news/2018/jan/29/surge-hotel-renovations-hits-meetings-events/ Renovation has come to the fore among local hotels as construction slowed last year and several prominent redo projects concluded or are scheduled to debut. Atlas Hospitality Group in Irvine said new projects added 960 rooms at six hotels in 2017 but that renovations finished at 13 hotels with about 3,600 rooms. Renovation work spans the county, from Disney’s Grand Californian Hotel & Spa in Anaheim—which at more than 1,000 rooms beats new-builds by itself—to DoubleTree by Hilton Doheny Beach Hotel in Dana Point. The new room count was down 47% from 2016, though the market is poised to regain part of the equivalent of last year’s loss this year—the Lido House by Bob Olson’s development and construction companies will open in Newport Beach in March, for instance—but renovations still dwarf new construction. If all eight hotels under construction opened this year, they would bring 1,657 rooms to the market. Of course, that’s not happening—the 600-plus-room Westin Anaheim Resort, for one, only broke ground in September. Meanwhile, Atlas data show 10 hotels under renovation…
Hotel Report: 10,000 New Rooms Likely Soon
Los Angeles Business Journal 01/26/18 Hotel Report: 10,000 New Rooms Likely Soon By Caroline Anderson http://labusinessjournal.com/news/2018/jan/26/hotel-report-10000-new-rooms-likely-soon Los Angeles is a hot spot in the strongest market for hotel development in the past 30 years – but that doesn’t mean everything on the drawing board will come to fruition. That’s a caveat that Atlas Hospitality Group added to its recently released California Hotel Development Survey for 2017. The report tallied 4,300-plus new hotel rooms in Los Angeles County last year, tops in the state. L.A. also finished 2017 with the 33,500 hotel rooms on the drawing board – the most in the state and more than double San Diego County, the next closest market. It’s likely that about one-third of the proposed rooms – 10,000 or so – will be built over the course of several years, according to Atlas Hospitality President Alan Reay. Reay’s estimate is a projection based on historical data over the last 20 years. Interest from overseas investors, low interest rates, availability of financing and the strength of the California economy have helped drive the hotel building boom, Reay said. Downtown appears poised to get a large chunk of any hotel rooms developed in the next…
California Exceeds Supply Expectations with Record 2017
HotelNewsNow 01/25/18 California Exceeds Supply Expectations with Record 2017 California set a record in 2017 for the number of hotel rooms opened, which sources believe illustrates the state’s ability to absorb new supply. California is on track to see another record year of development in 2018, but some are wondering how much more supply the state can take in without hurting performance. By Bryan Wroten http://www.hotelnewsnow.com/Articles/269626/California-exceeds-supply-expectations-with-record-2017 REPORT FROM CALIFORNIA—All signs pointed to 2017 being a good year for hotel development in California. As it turns out, it was so good that the state saw the highest number of openings of new guestrooms ever. “We haven’t seen hotel development in California like this since 2008,” said Alan Reay, president of the Atlas Hospitality Group, author of 2017 California Hotel Development Survey. “It was a very strong year for construction companies, developers, construction lenders, all of that.” Atlas had predicted a strong 2017 for California hotel development, he said, but no one there expected the number of new room openings to hit 10,793 in 66 hotels, surpassing 2008’s record of 10,286 new rooms. There were several contributing factors, Reay said, including a strong California economy, record revenue growth for the state’s…
Anaheim Hotel Sold by Trustee for $26M
CoStar 01/23/18 Anaheim Hotel Sold by Trustee for $26M Portofino’s Former Owner Defaulted on $36M Loan By Lou Hirsh https://gateway.costar.com/home/news/shared/186846 The 190-room Portofino Inn & Suites hotel in Anaheim, CA has been sold by a trustee for $26 million, after its prior owner defaulted on a $36 million loan on the property located at 1831 S. Harbor Blvd. The hotel remains open for business. Title documents indicate that the property’s ground lease and structures were acquired in a December trustee sale by a limited liability company in Maryland affiliated with CW Capital Asset Management LLC. Bethesda-based CW Capital is a special-services and asset management firm focused on transactions related to financially distressed properties. The hotel was originally built in 1978 and is located about a half-mile from Disneyland. The property’s ground lease and structures on the land had been owned previously by SDRP I LLC, a Delaware limited liability company, via a loan taken out in 2007 Documents indicate that SDRP, as of July 26, 2017, owed $36.33 million on a bank loan with an original balance of $36.75 million. The unpaid balance on the principal came due on May 11, 2017, and the trustee sale took place in…
L.A. County’s New Hotel Rooms Lead State
Los Angeles Business Journal 01/19/18 L.A. County’s New Hotel Rooms Lead State By Caroline Anderson http://labusinessjournal.com/news/2018/jan/19/l-countys-new-hotel-rooms-lead-state/ Los Angeles played a leading role as California saw a record number of new hotels open their doors last year, according to a report released this month by Irvine-based hotel brokerage Atlas Hospitality. The number of new hotel rooms that opened in Los Angeles County increased 300 percent last year to about 4,300 rooms from about 1,100 in 2016, Atlas reported. The increase came as 23 hotels debuted over the year, including the Intercontinental Los Angeles Downtown, the Waldorf Astoria Beverly Hills and the Hotel Indigo Downtown Los Angeles. The Intercontinental Los Angeles Downtown was the single largest hotel to open in the state with 889 rooms. L.A. County looks set for another robust round of additions with more than 5,300 rooms under construction as 2017 ended, according to Atlas. The county also has more hotel rooms planned – on the drawing board but not yet under construction – than any other county in the state. There are nearly 34,000 rooms currently planned here, up 20 percent from the prior year, according to Atlas. There are about 80,000 rooms planned statewide. The next closest…
San Diego in Midst of Hotel Building Boom
The San Diego Union-Tribune 01/22/18 San Diego in Midst of Hotel Building Boom By Lori Weisberg http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/business/tourism/sd-fi-hotel-building-20180122-story.html In the span of a year, the number of hotel rooms under construction in San Diego County doubled, outpacing all other counties in Southern California. New year-end figures released by Orange County-based Atlas Hospitality Group document a continued building boom up and down the state, with a record 10,793 hotel rooms that opened in California in 2017 and 125,749 more still in the planning stage. What is less clear is how many of those hotel projects will move forward and whether the pace of development can be sustained well into the future. Atlas CEO Alan Reay, who admits to being a little surprised by the robust pace of growth, remains bullish on development into this year and next. “I would have anticipated a little more caution, both from developers and banks but the opposite has happened,” he said. “It’s amazing to see the amount of development going on. It seems a day doesn’t go by where you don’t hear about the impact of Airbnb and yet the demand for hotels is still very strong.” In San Diego County, there are 2,823 rooms…
Fig Fancy
Los Angeles Business Journal 12/29/17 Fig Fancy Downtown hotel set to reopen after extended renovation By Caroline Anderson http://labusinessjournal.com/news/2017/dec/29/fig-fancy/ The historic Hotel Figueroa’s doors are anticipated to open for business in coming months, thanks to a renovation that will be fancier – and pricier – than originally expected. Owners of the hotel – New York-based real estate investment management firm GreenOak Real Estate and Urban Lifestyle Hotels in Beverly Hills – are about two years overdue in what was supposed to be a one-year upgrade, according to reports of the owners’ timeline when the project broke ground in November 2015. The renovation of the 1925 structure ballooned into a major overhaul with custom upgrades that were timely and expensive, according to the project’s general contractor, Shangri-LA Construction in downtown. The vision for the property changed significantly once work began, said Joe Martino, Shangri-LA’s chief operating officer, sending the project over the preliminary budget by about $16 million and costing time by adding fancy amenities, such as a custom-built pizza oven. The overall shift required 31 city permit changes, and the cost swelled to more than $60 million in construction materials and labor, according to Martino, approaching the $65 million…
Hotel Developers Grab Site Near Downtown San Jose’s Google Village Project
The Mercury News 01/18/18 Hotel Developers Grab Site Near Downtown San Jose’s Google Village Project By George Avalos https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/01/18/hotel-developers-grab-site-near-downtown-san-joses-diridon-station-google-transit-village/ SAN JOSE — Realty investors have grabbed a downtown San Jose property that’s expected to be developed as a high-rise hotel, a lodging site that would sprout next to a planned Google transit village. Diridon Hospitality paid $4 million for the property at the corner of Stockton Avenue and West Julian Avenue on Jan. 16, according to Santa Clara County property records. The county records show that Diridon Hospitality, an affiliate of Dallas-based Kade Development, paid cash. The seller was the San Jose Redevelopment Agency. This deal provides a fresh sign of the Google effect that appears to be spurring a variety of development efforts in downtown San Jose. “If you look at the site right now, it does’t necessarily show itself as a hotel development property,” said Dharmesh Patel, an executive managing director for hotels with Colliers International, a commercial realty brokerage. “But with the Diridon Station project, the Google development, Trammell Crow, TMG, Adobe expansions, when all that comes to fruition, this hotel would be smack dab in the middle of that activity.” Realty investors are increasingly eyeing…
Developer Goes Micro with Plans for Pod Hotel in SoMa
San Francisco Business Times 01/16/18 Developer Goes Micro with Plans for Pod Hotel in SoMa By Katie Burke https://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/news/2018/01/16/micro-hotel-development-hospitality-soma-sf-pod.html Few hotel guests have probably had the urge to snuggle in bed and flush the toilet at the same time, but the recent spurt of new micro hotel developments in San Francisco could make that possible. A new pod hotel proposal slated for Central SoMa is just the latest one to join the party. Local developer Leon Lee submitted plans for a pod hotel at 744 Harrison St., a site at the heart of the city’s influx of new hotels. The proposed plans call for demolishing the two-story building on the site and replacing it with an eight-story building with 52 micro-rooms and nine units of market-rate group housing. According to the project’s filing, the developer is expecting to have the property open by early 2019. Last year, California set a record — opening more than 10,790 hotel rooms, according to a recent Atlas Hospitality Group report, breaking a record previously set in 2008. In the Bay Area, that included the delivery of 290 rooms between the debuts of both the Hotel Via and Proper Hotel. This year, another 670…
Cookie Dough, Queso and Delivery Robots: Here Are the Biggest Hospitality Trends of 2018
San Francisco Business Times 01/12/18 Cookie Dough, Queso and Delivery Robots: Here Are the Biggest Hospitality Trends of 2018 By Katie Burke https://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/news/2018/01/12/sf-travel-hospitality-hotel-tourism-development.html From robot-run hotels to mocktail menus, San Francisco’s hospitality industry is bracing for some major changes in the year ahead. With technology and fast-changing customer demands expected to drive the biggest trends for 2018, hotels, restaurants and others in the business were told at San Francisco Travel Association’s market briefing that they could count on one thing: nothing. The Moscone Center renovation’s impending completion, the influx of new hotel development and a worsening worker shortage will underlie these trends as the industry moves through the year. From opening a wine bar adjacent to a higher-end restaurant to offering cold brew coffee tastings in the lobby, take a look at the slideshow for some of the biggest trends expected to hit in 2018. Andrew Freeman, a partner at restaurant and hotel consultant AF&Co., said being able to adapt to the industry’s shifting climate will be key. Whether its incorporating a delivery service into a restaurant, creating an app for hotel guests to remotely check in or cut down on menu items to focus on a more specific…
Ex-Hotel Operator Breaks Her Silence
Laguna Beach Independent 01/12/18 Ex-Hotel Operator Breaks Her Silence By Andrea Adelson https://www.lagunabeachindy.com/ex-hotel-operator-breaks-silence Responsibility for the deteriorating condition of Hotel Laguna and its abrupt closure last month lies with the Central Valley farm family that has owned the property since the ’70s, according to the hotel’s longtime former lessee, Georgia Andersen. In breaking her silence in an interview this week, Andersen expressed her frustration with E. W. Merritt Farms Inc. of Porterville, a dispute that is now the subject of a legal battle. “I’m happy to be done with that family,” said Andersen, who with her son, Stefan, in recent years ran the 68-room downtown landmark that she and her late husband Claes initially leased beginning in 1981. Andersen described more than 30 years of ongoing disputes with the landlord over who should shoulder the costs of improvements in the historic oceanfront property even as high-end rivals opened their doors. Andersen said even when bar patrons propped up umbrellas inside to fend off drips, her landlord foisted off roof repairs as her problem. The $50,000 roof replacement earned a lease extension, she said. As another example of neglect, Andersen cited an electrical panel explosion that forced the two-day relocation…
What the Economy Is Doing to OC Hotels
GlobeSt.com 01/12/18 What the Economy Is Doing to OC Hotels By Carrie Rossenfeld The improved economy, coupled with the spike in new hotel development, means we are seeing more owners invest considerable amount of dollars toward renovation and upgrades, Atlas Hospitality’s Alan Reay tells GlobeSt.com. http://www.globest.com/sites/carrierossenfeld/2018/01/12/what-the-economy-is-doing-to-oc-hotels IRVINE, CA—The improved economy, coupled with the spike in new hotel development, means we are seeing more owners invest considerable amount of dollars toward renovation and upgrades, Atlas Hospitality Group’s president Alan Reay tells GlobeSt.com. The firm recently released its 2017 Year-End California Hotel Development Survey, which revealed that six Orange County hotels with 960 rooms opened in 2017, a 47%-room-count drop from the seven hotels with 1,808 hotels that opened in 2016. The 271-room Marriott Irvine Spectrum was the largest hotel to open in Orange County in 2017, according to the survey. The market has eight hotels with 1,657 rooms under construction; the largest is the 613-room Westin Anaheim Resort. Orange County has 57 hotels with 11,184 rooms in planning, a 27% room-count increase over 2016. We spoke with Reay about the emerging hotel trends he is noticing in Orange County, the comparison of hotel renovations to ground-up builds and what investors…
