Newport Beach Adds Hotel Rooms, Conference Center
<B> Newport Beach Adds Hotel Rooms, Conference Center</B>
By Judy Jacobs
High-tech development is fueling business travel and the corporate meetings market in Newport Beach, the Orange County beach resort located 50 miles south of Los Angeles. This year, this scenic community plans a major hotel expansion, a new resort and a soon-to-open golf clubhouse and meeting venue.
Newport Beach lies at the heart of what has been dubbed Technology Coast, stretching from Santa Barbara to San Diego and centered around the city of Irvine. Irvine has enticed software, computer, medical and biotechnology companies to set up shop in recent years.
With 2,600 hotel rooms to fill, and more on the way, Newport Beach continues to benefit from this growth. "A good deal of our overall business is meetings and conferences, especially medical and pharmaceutical meetings and insurance," said Rosalind Williams, president and CEO of the Newport Beach Conference and Visitors Bureau. "We book about 1,000 meetings a year. We don't have a conference center but can handle up to about 500 people, with groups given a choice of hotels."
The Four Seasons Hotel plans to add 100 rooms, an additional 10,000 square-foot ballroom and a 15,000 square-foot spa. Construction is expected to begin soon and take about 22 months, said Dave Lambert, director of sales. "It won't interrupt the operation of the hotel, however, because we're building on an adjacent lot. The additional rooms will all have ocean views and give us more high end suites." The hotel already boasts a 6,500 square-foot ballroom, five meeting rooms measuring between 480 and 1,900 square feet each and a boardroom.
Meanwhile, Newport Dunes Resort, an RV resort, is awaiting approval to build a 400-room hotel geared toward the meetings market. Among planned facilities are two 12,000 square-foot ballrooms. The targeted opening date is July 4, 2001.
Newport Beach also this month will see the opening of the Pelican Hill Conference Center. Perched above the two Pelican Hill golf courses, which were both ranked among the top 50 public courses in America by Golf Magazine, the center can accommodate meetings, conferences and banquets of 10 to 300.