Still no progress on L.A. Convention Center hotel: $150,000 worth of studies yield no feasible solution.

Still no progress on L.A. Convention Center hotel

More than three months after rejecting all proposals for the project, city officials so far have failed to make any progress to revive plans for construction of a major hotel adjacent to the Los Angeles Convention Center.

No meetings or discussions have been held on resurrecting the project, despite pledges and recommendations by officials that city agencies continue to explore the possibility of constructing a major hotel next to the center, which is now undergoing a $500 million expansion.

Officials said last week that there has been no movement on the project whatsoever, despite two city agencies having spent at least $150,000 on studies of the hotel project during the last two years.

"Nothing is going on. No meetings have been held," said Keith Comrie, the city's chief administrative officer. "It's the CRA's (Community Redevelopment Agency's) project. Everyone could be waiting for the economy to get better."

A CRA spokesman, Chuck Sifuentes, said the agency's project manager for the proposed hotel was on vacation and unavailable last week.

But CRA board member Dennis Luna said there has been no progress on the hotel.

"I would think something is going to happen soon and I think we have two options: determine whether its viable and realistic and go ahead with it, or just decide to wait," said Luna.

Last February, the CRA board of commissioners rejected plans for the project presented by three Los Angeles developers that ranged in price from $263 million to $303 million. The proposals ranged in size from 1,350 hotel guest rooms to 1,435, as well as retail space.

The CRA board said it rejected all three proposals because the developers requested too much money in subsidies from the city. The requests had ranged from $47.3 million to $91.6 million.

In a staff report to the board, the CRA recommended rejecting the three proposals but said the agency, the Los Angeles Convention & Visitors Bureau, the city's Administrative Office and the Convention Center Authority should begin a "further evaluation of the convention hotel" and might initiate another "request for proposals once the economy improves."

The CRA staff report also said the hotel "is critical to the successful marketing of the Convention Center."

Dick Walsh, general manager of the Convention Center, said the lack of any progress on reviving the project may be attributable to the resignation of John Tuite as administrator of the CRA earlier this year, as well as the continuing recession.

"I met with Ed Avila (Tuite's interim successor) about a month ago and told him how important it is for the Convention Center to have this hotel. He's aware of the importance of the hotel," said Walsh.

Avila did not return a Business Journal phone call.

The vice president of public affairs for the Convention and Visitors Bureau, Michael Collins, said meetings had been scheduled to discuss the hotel but were canceled because of conflicts with other scheduled events.

"The project is not dead but the timetable for building it is still unclear. From the bureau's position, we are still planning on that hotel being built by 1997. I think the problem now is the same problem of several months ago and that is the economy. There are indicators out there that say it will change, but so far it hasn't," said Collins.