THE EARTHQUAKE IN ORANGE COUNTY : Plans Told for $300-Million Hotel Complex

South Orange County’s coastline soon will get a $300-million resort complex that is determined to out-glitz the Ritz.

The resort, planned for 165 acres at Monarch Beach in Laguna Niguel, is being touted by its developers as on a par with French and Italian coastal resorts.

Laguna Niguel’s Stein-Brief Group has teamed up with a Hawaiian hotel builder, Hemmeter Corp., to build the complex through a development partnership called Laguna Niguel Resort Associates.

If the two-hotel project just up the coast from Dana Point proceeds as planned, global jet-setters will have the first “truly first-class destination resort for Southern California” by the fall of 1990, said Christopher Townsend, a Stein-Brief spokesman.

That would be unexpected news indeed for the nearby Ritz-Carlton, the five-star luxury resort hotel just across Coast Highway in Laguna Niguel. In just three years, the 393-room Ritz-Carlton has evolved from a traditional business hotel to a weekend mecca for local and international celebrities.

Major Resort Region

With the Dana Point Resort, which opened last month, plus seven more hotels planned for the coastland stretch, Orange County will be competing head-on with such major resort destinations as Palm Springs and Scottsdale, Ariz., said David R. Kinkade, a hotel and leisure expert with the accounting firm of Laventhol & Horwath in Costa Mesa.

Developers of the new resort complex plan to eclipse the Ritz by building a 276-luxury-suite hotel where “a standard suite will compare with the nicest suites at the Ritz,” Townsend said. Nearby will be an 850-room hotel and conference center that Townsend described as “comparable to the Ritz,” where rates range from $175 to $1,500 per night.

The Links, an existing public golf course at Salt Creek, just down the coast from Monarch Bay, will be expanded to 18 holes on 125 acres. It will be used by guests of the new complex and the Ritz-Carlton as well as by the public, Townsend said. A tram will connect the golf course to the hotels and a 1,100-square-foot oceanside beach house, dining facility and changing rooms.

County, Coast Panel OK Needed

The partnership still needs approval from Orange County and the California Coastal Commission to build the resort complex.

But after five years of planning, the partnership is optimistic that officials will approve the complex, Townsend said. For one thing, he noted, a commercial center has been approved for the site, and the proposed new project “would bring less traffic.”

The look and style of the new facility will be determined by the hotel chain chosen to operate and manage it. The developers are expected to make that announcement later this month, but industry insiders are betting on either Hyatt Regency or Westin because Hemmeter has used both chains to operate five hotels in Hawaii.

Other potential candidates to manage the resort complex are the Marriott, Sheraton and Princess chains, industry sources said.

No matter which chain is chosen, industry insiders said that if the new hotel adheres to Hemmeter’s typical design standards, it will have lush landscaping and lavish accommodations.

Hemmeter is a major developer of resort hotels loaded with amenities, including the Hyatt Regency Waikiki, Hyatt Regency Maui and the new Westin Maui. Those hotels all contain Hemmeter trademarks such as grottoes, waterfalls, bridges and slides linking several levels of man-made pools.

In fact, competitors believe those tropical touches will distinguish the new complex from existing resorts--and help consumers decide where they want to spend their travel dollars.

“They’ll have people who like excitement, lots of waterfalls and slides . . . like Hyatt’s glass elevators,” said Henry E. Schielein, general manager at the Ritz-Carlton.

“Fortunately, the traveling public is very diversified.

“I’m sure Hemmeter has something spectacular in mind, but it will be very different from us. We’re striving more for the elegance--not necessarily slides across pools and waterfalls,” Schielein said.

Locally, the new complex will compete primarily with the Ritz-Carlton and with the less formal, 350-room Dana Point Resort, about one mile down the coast.

Both neighbors concede that the new resort will siphon some business at first. “There’s always an impact--no question about it,” Schielein said.

But eventually, the combined effect will be to enhance Dana Point’s image as a destination resort center, according to sources at all three complexes.

“The Ritz opened up the door nationally, and we’re hitching our wagon to their star,” said Sherrie Laveroni, general manager of the Dana Point Resort. “People know about this area . . . and we’ll offer people more choices.”

“We think we’ll complement each other,” Townsend said. “The Ritz is fantastic, but it takes more than one hotel to make a self-contained destination area.”

According to Laventhol’s Kinkade, the South Coast resorts are likely to prosper.

Kinkade recalled that some skeptics initially scoffed at the idea of a plush Ritz-Carlton at Laguna Niguel. “If the Ritz can come out of the ground doing as well as it did, I have a tough time being pessimistic. Senior (business) people today are finding that it’s essential to get away from the office for a few days for strategic planning sessions and meetings, so there’s a good market,” he said.