Burbank Airport Hotel to undergo major renovation: city's hospitality scene, room rates improving.

Construction is expected to start this winter on a $24 million renovation of the former Hilton Burbank Airport and Convention Center, which last month was re-branded a Marriott property after it was sold to a Boston hotel operator.

The 488-room property, now known as the Marriott Burbank Airport Hotel and Convention Center, is slated to receive a large-scale overhaul of its guest and public areas, said George McGann, the hotel's vice president, managing director and partner.

Preliminary plans call for remodeling guest rooms, some meeting spaces and the hotel's exterior.

McGann said plans are still being hammered out and await approval from Marriott International Inc. corporate offices in Bethesda, Md.

"At that point in time we were going through the process of finding out what the design will be," he said.

The construction effort is expected to last about four months, he said.

It is the first major renovation of the 27-year-old property at 2500 Hollywood Way since 1999, when Chicago-based owner Strategic Hotels & Resorts Inc. spent nine months upgrading the east and west towers and adding the Daily Grill restaurant, rental car desk and other amenities. It cost $5 million.

Hotel rooms were renovated again in 2001 and another $1 million was spent in late 2005 soundproofing the 50,000-square-foot convention center.

In August, Strategic sold the property to Pyramid Hotel Opportunity Venture II LLC of Boston for $125 million, or about $256,000 per room.

The new owners decided the property could be better served as a Marriott property because there was an over-saturation of Hilton hotels in the Valley and not as many Marriotts, McGann said. (That despite the fact there is a Courtyard by Marriott on nearby Empire Avenue and construction is expected to finish later this year on another Marriott, at 321 S. First St.)

"This gives us a competitive edge in the market," he said. "There are a few other Hilton hotels in the area."

Increasing Attention

The effort to upgrade the Hilton appears to reflect an overall increased interest in the Burbank-area hotel scene.

Last month, the Maryland developer LaSalle Hotel Properties paid $36.5 million for the Graciela Burbank, a 99-room luxury boutique hotel on Pass Avenue near Warner Bros. Ranch that opened in 2002.

In addition to the new First Street Marriott, NBC-Universal is also mulling over plans to construct a 500-room hotel as part of its $3 billion upgrade of its Universal Studios Hollywood property, just outside city lines.

Such growth coincides with a year of mostly steady occupancies and increasing room rates among Valley-area hotels. In October, the average room in the Valley cost 10.5 percent more than a year ago, according to the hotel trends tracking firm PKF Consulting. Those numbers were mirrored at the Hilton Burbank, where occupancy rates for the first six months of 2006 were 75.4 percent, a 7 percent gain from the same 2005 period, according to a Strategic second quarter earnings report.

McGann said the re-branded Marriott would build on that by continuing to rely on business travelers from nearby Bob Hope Airport and convention business from Burbank clients Yahoo!, Warner Bros. and Aramark.

But the goal is to turn the hotel into a luxury property, he said.

"We are going to make it the place in the San Fernando Valley for meeting and conventions and travelers," he said. "With the renovations it's going to be a beautiful hotel. It's going to look completely different."

It also continues a major shift in the land use of that area of Burbank, which for years was dominated by industrial and airport-related uses. The city has spent the past decade spearheading its redevelopment into more high-tech and office properties.

That effort will benefit from a large-scale project such as the new Marriott, said Jack Lynch, a supervisor on the Golden State Redevelopment Project Area.

"Anytime somebody reinvests into existing buildings, we think that's a good thing," he said.

BY CHRIS COATES 

Staff Reporter