Waterfront Condos, Resort Win Final OK : Huntington Beach Project May Be Renaissance Key

A $350-million Mediterranean-style resort and condominium development known as the Waterfront received final approval late Monday night from the Huntington Beach City Council, which hopes the project will spur a renaissance of the community’s aging downtown.

Ground breaking is expected to begin this fall on the first of six phases on the 44-acre parcel. The sumptuous development will include four hotels, a public health club, restaurants, shops and 875 condominiums, to be built over the next nine years.

Approval of the Waterfront, which met no public opposition Monday night and had only two opponents when it was before the Planning Commission, marks the first major downtown Huntington Beach redevelopment project to make progress in the city’s 20-year quest to improve the downtown.

“I’ve been around city councils and the Board of Supervisors for 10 years, and I’ve never seen anything like it,” Huntington Beach Mayor John Erskine said Tuesday, referring to the support the huge project received in these slow-growth times.

A swank 296-room Hilton hotel plus a restaurant and underground parking garage will be the first buildings constructed, at the northern edge of the site, which fronts the inland side of Pacific Coast Highway between Beach Boulevard and Huntington Street, Erskine said. He said he believes that the development is the largest ever in west Orange County.

The Robert Mayer Corp. of Newport Beach, which has a 25-year lease on the city-owned property, will develop the Waterfront.

Kathy Head, a city-hired economic consultant for Keyser Marston Associates of Los Angeles, said the resort development will earn the city $52.23 million in present-day dollars over the next 45 years, plus an additional $150,000 in annual sales tax revenues once it is completed.