Officials: Poway close to hotel groundbreaking

By: ANDREA MOSS - Staff Writer | Sunday, May 13, 2007 1:02 AM PDT ∞

POWAY -- After several false starts and periods of dormancy, a long-awaited business hotel project looks like it is close to breaking ground.

Poway's redevelopment services director, Dena Fuentes, said Thursday that Ocean Park Hotels recently began applying for city building and grading permits for the $14.5 million project. The Valencia-based company simultaneously is finalizing loans and other financing and lining up construction contracts, she said.

The hotel -- a three-story, 108-room Hampton Inn & Suites -- will go up on 3 acres on the northeast corner of Scripps Poway Parkway that Ocean Park will buy from the city. A deal that the company signed with the city last year calls for the developer to pay $1,585,000 million for the property.

Fuentes said city officials are preparing grant deeds, easement and access agreements, and other documents necessary to complete the sale in June, at the developer's request. And Ocean Park President Jim Flagg said Friday that residents can expect tractors to start moving dirt on the hotel site in mid or late July.

His firm hopes to see the hotel finished within 12 months, he said.

"My goal is (to open) by Memorial Day next year so we kind of catch the kickoff to the summer season," said Flagg. "A lot will depend on the winter. If we get a wet winter, that could slow down the construction schedule, and if we get a dry winter, we should be able to speed up that 12-month schedule."

City Manager Rod Gould described himself as "optimistically cautious" and "officially confident" about the project's chances of breaking ground in the next couple of months.

"You have every reason to be skeptical," he said. "But we've gotten past so many hurdles this time that we really think that we're in the home stretch."

Business leaders welcomed the news that the hotel's groundbreaking could occur soon.

"I think it's a good thing for the business park to have a hotel and to have additional meeting space for people who want to hold business meetings and things like that," said Jean Bruni, chairwoman of the South Poway Business Association. "It's certainly advantageous for companies who are having business meetings and people coming in. It's always nice to have a nice hotel to put people up."

Poway Chamber of Commerce Chairman Jeff Figler said local businesses would also welcome the hotel for similar reasons. And Councilwoman Betty Rexford said that with the business park nearly built out now, the hotel is needed more than ever.

"I'm very pleased because, as you know, it's been a long time in coming," Rexford said. "It's taken some time. But anything worth doing is worth doing right."

Years in the making

The hotel was earmarked for the South Poway Business Park from the time the area was mapped out in the late 1980s. The original development plans called for the hotel to be built when the park had a sufficient number of businesses to support the hotel.

City officials in 2001 bought 4 acres for $1.84 million for the hotel and a restaurant, then launched a search for potential developers as partners for the project.

The search seemed to have ended in 2002 when Poway signed a development deal with Carlsbad-based Waterford Development Co.

The firm drew up plans for a Hampton Inn & Suites complete with a ballroom, meeting space, a catering kitchen, a swimming pool and other amenities. In late 2003, however, the deal with Waterford collapsed after the company said it was unable to obtain the financing it needed to build the hotel.

Ocean Park Hotels got involved in the project in early 2005. Developer, owner and operator of multiple Hilton, Holiday Inn, Hampton Inn and Best Western hotels in California and Arizona, the company signed its agreement with the city in February 2006.

Design tweaked

The deal calls for the developer to put $2.5 million of its money into the project. The city will loan the company $1.5 million and be paid market-rate interest on the funds, with the rest of the money coming from a bank loan that Ocean Park was to obtain under the agreement's terms.

Poway will seek another developer to build a restaurant on the remaining acre of city-owned property.

At the time the deal with Ocean Park was made, city officials said the company was prepared to break ground within a month and planned to open the hotel by March 2007.

On Thursday, Fuentes said that timeline was thrown off by the Hilton Corp., which owns and licenses the Hampton Inn brand.

The parent company, which has approval rights over the hotel's design, changed its ownership structure and brought in "a person who had a different perspective" on how the building's interior areas should look, she said. Reworking the plans so they fit Hilton's new vision delayed the project, said Fuentes, who continued to meet with Flagg every two weeks throughout the process.

"It definitely required patience," the redevelopment services director said. "I think both of us would have liked to have this project started sooner. But we're very close (now)."

The hotel's exterior remains unchanged from the design for a three-story facility that was made public last year, she said.

Flagg said he is excited to be this close to starting the Poway hotel.

"The city's been great to work with, and I think we have a great project and we look forward to getting it started," he said.

-- Contact staff writer Andrea Moss at (760) 739-6654 or amoss@nctimes.com.

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Poway, developer reach agreement on business hotel

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