Mountain View Seeks to Revive Plan to Build First-Class Hotel

• 
  SAVE
• 
  SHARE
• 
  TEXT SIZE
• 
  PRINT
• 
  COMMENT
• 
  PDF

. October 14, 2008

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA, April 16, 2006. The city has embarked on an initiative to revive an old dream: to build a first-class hotel and conference center in the booming North Bayshore area, shouting distance from Google headquarters.

The city has long studied the idea of putting a hotel and conference center within the acres of land next to Shoreline Park. But a host of proposals floated by developers over the years have failed to get off the drawing board, according to local reports.

In 1985, there was a 500-room hotel proposed by local development company Peery/Arrillaga. Another developer in 1987 wanted to put in a 300- to 400-room hotel, along with three 18-story office towers, that would have loomed over the park's peaceful enclave. The ensuing outcry cost the city manager his job.

Two years later, the city actually approved another developer's plans for a conference center that would have included 300 hotel rooms, but the financing fell through.

And in 2000, Hyatt planned a 350-room hotel with a conference center of up to 35,000 square feet. Then the dot-com bubble burst, followed by the Sept. 11 terror attacks, triggering a recession. The hotel market plunged, and Hyatt demanded the city invest up to $18 million in the project, dooming the deal.

Now things may be turning around. A report by CBRE Consulting-Sedway Group of San Francisco, which advised the city on a new hotel plan, said the market is rebounding and predicted a hotel could pump in healthy revenue.

Civic leaders like the location, known as Charleston East, because it's surrounded by companies like Google, Intuit, Sun Microsystems and Silicon Graphics, as well as the NASA/Ames Research Center.

The city council last month voted to study a scaled-back hotel plan with 200 rooms and 15,000 square feet of conference space, which could later be doubled to 30,000 square feet.

Although the consultant's February report says the city might need to invest up to $16 million in the project to attract a high-quality hotel developer, city officials say they might help finance the hotel by building and leasing offices nearby. Already, Google has jumped at the idea of using those offices as a research park.

Once the hotel and offices are built, they could generate $3.7 million to $6.1 million in annual city revenue, the report says.