Holding their own

Paul Clinton

A new-kid-on-the-block luxury hotel along Huntington Beach’s

coastline is expected to snatch some corporate events and larger

fund-raisers away from Newport-Mesa, but local hoteliers are

confident the shopping and allure of the area will ultimately carry

the day.

In late January, the Hyatt Regency Huntington Beach Resort & Spa

opened along a stretch of Pacific Coast Highway amid much fanfare.

The sprawling $120-million resort offers more than 110,000 square

feet of meeting and function space, 517 luxurious guestrooms and a

full-service business center. The hotel’s 20,000-square-foot Grand

Ballroom and 10,700-square-foot exhibition hall are also one of a

kind in coastal Orange County.

“Anytime you have a new hotel coming in, it’s going to have an

effect on business,” said Mehdi Eftekari, the general manager at

Newport Beach’s Four Seasons Hotel. “Inquiring minds want to know.”

Worrisome to some in the local hotel industry is that none of

Newport-Mesa’s 14 hotels -- there are seven in each city -- offer

facilities that can accommodate an event larger than about 500

guests. And none offer a conference center.

This point was not lost on newly elected Huntington Beach

Councilwoman Jill Hardy, who in January lauded the Hyatt as

“something the Newport Beach hotels can’t offer.”

Eftekari’s Four Seasons counts 35,000 square feet of meeting

space, highlighted by the 8,000-square-foot Palm Gardens outdoor

tented area, the 6,600-square-foot Grand Ballroom and a clubhouse at

Pelican Hill Golf Course.

Hilton Costa Mesa, the largest of the Costa Mesa hotels, offers

almost half the amount of function space of the Hyatt with 46,000

square feet. That hotel considers the 12,160-square-foot Pacific

Ballroom its crown jewel.

Hilton General Manager Richard Ham acknowledges that while his

hotel hosts its share of corporate events, the Hyatt will be able to

attract the larger events.

“It’s a different world than Huntington Beach,” Ham said. “Our

target audience is different from their target audience.”

While a peak event at the Hilton would reach capacity at about 400

guests, a filler at the Hyatt could accommodate more than 2,000

people. Events larger than that would usually book the Anaheim

Convention Center, which offers 1.4 million square feet of meeting

and function space.

Other than the Hilton, only the Westin South Coast Plaza, with

26,650 square feet of space, can claim a significant share of the

corporate-event market in Costa Mesa.

In Newport Beach, five hotels offer at least 18,000 square feet of

function space. The Newport Beach Marriott & Tennis Club is the

largest of those, with 41,000 square feet. The Hyatt Newporter,

Sutton Place Hotel and Radisson Hotel Newport Beach round out the

list, along with the Four Seasons, of course.

STILL HOST TO THE PRIME-TIME EVENTS

Even though fears of a war with Iraq have had a cooling effect,

Newport-Mesa’s hospitality industry appears fairly strong. Local

hotel operators have been able to attract their share of corporate

events and fund-raisers because of the area’s allure.

The hotels are positioned closer to John Wayne Airport than the

Hyatt Regency, shortening the drive to and from the transportation

hub by out-of-town visitors. The area also offers a bevy of

top-flight restaurants, attractive shopping destinations, the

nation’s No. 1 pleasure harbor and many other recreational

activities.

“There’s a little more cachet associated with our name,” said

Marta Hayden, the executive director of the Newport Beach Conference

& Visitors Bureau. “There is a wonderful aura when you come here.”

Event planners seem to agree.

Perhaps one of Newport Beach’s ritziest black-tie events each year

is Hoag Hospital’s holiday fund-raiser at the Four Seasons, now

called the Christmas Carol Ball.

Hoag’s 552 Club fund-raising committee has already booked the

hotel for this year’s event, which is expected to draw more than 375

guests at about $200 a head.

But if given the opportunity, event organizers said they would

consider the Hyatt, said Ron Guziak, the executive director of

hospital fund-raiser the Hoag Foundation.

“The reality is that the Four Seasons and Marriott are great

hotels, but their ballrooms are limited in size,” Guziak said. “If

the occasion presented itself, we would take a serious look at doing

an event at the Hyatt Regency.”

The Four Seasons also hosts the American Airlines Celebrity Golf

Tournament every October at Pelican Hill. The event, booked until

2004, raises funds for cancer research.

Other annual fund-raisers at the Four Seasons are an event to

benefit groups fighting pediatric cancer, cystic fibrosis and autism.

The hotel also caters the Candlelight Concert, the annual Orange

County Performing Arts Center fund-raiser in Costa Mesa.

The Newport Beach Marriott & Tennis Club hosts Hoag’s board

meetings and the annual Our Lady Queen of Angels fund-raiser.

Marriott’s Randa Richardson, the director of sales and marketing,

can’t help worrying about the Hyatt.

“Because of the meeting space, it’s going to have an impact on how

we’ll be able to book business,” Richardson said. “Our biggest

differentiating factor is our location, our proximity to John Wayne

Airport and the beach. The Newport Beach area is also a much more

sophisticated area.”

THE CONFERENCE CENTER THAT WASN’T MEANT TO BE

Newport Beach lost a chance to attract larger events in 2000, when

residents rose to quash a plan from the former owners of the Newport

Dunes Waterfront Resort to add a conference center in an expansion.

Evans Hotels, at the time, proposed a new 470-room hotel, complete

with a 31,000-square-foot conference area, for property already

approved for development.

In November of that year, voters overwhelmingly approved the

slow-growth Greenlight Initiative, which requires a two-thirds public

approval for any large-scale development.

The Evans group postponed their bid to seek a vote on the hotel,

eventually dropping the bid altogether. They sold the resort in

August. The new owners say they have no plans to move forward with

the project.

While slow-growth politics have halted plans to add a conference

center to Newport Beach, Huntington Beach has welcomed their new

resort as a way to refashion a sleepy surf town into a destination

for corporate events.

Surf City is in the midst of a face-lift that city leaders hope

will add more retail shops and corporate events.

Newport Beach proper, excluding Newport Coast, is essentially

built out; the latest hotel proposal has met with heavy resistance.

Sutherland Talla Hospitality wants to build a 110-room luxury resort

at the site of the existing Marinapark mobile home park on Balboa

Peninsula.

Clearly, leaders from the two cities are approaching growth issues

in wildly divergent ways.

“They probably need to grow,” Mayor Steve Bromberg said about his

northern neighbor. “They are encouraging that kind of development.

Our city would not be encouraging that kind of monolith.”

* PAUL CLINTON covers the environment, business and politics. He

may be reached at (949) 764-4330 or by e-mail at

[email protected].