Hyatt a comfort to coffers

In describing the newly opened Hyatt Regency Huntington Beach

Resort & Spa, owner Steve Bone uses two words: comfortable luxury.

With ocean views, a few top-flight top rooms, touches like the

hand-blown Venetian glass chandeliers and the lagoon-style pool, it

is easy to see how guests -- whether there for business or pleasure

-- will be soaking in Bone’s depiction.

Those words could apply as well to how officials in Huntington

Beach City Hall will be feeling while cashing the money the resort is

expecting to generate.

Estimates for the bed tax revenues over the first three years are:

$700,000, $1.8 million and $2 million. Add to that $1 million in

annual revenue because the resort is in a redevelopment area, annual

rent payments to City Hall of $25,000, $75,000 and $150,000 in the

first three years of the project’s existence and $125,000 a year in

sales tax. Then, in 2005, the city is eligible to collect 3% of the

resort’s gross revenue, which is expected to top $25 million per

year.

It is enough to make a budget-battered city feel at least a brief

sense of well-being.

Others may still need convincing. The resort is the latest in a

string of controversial changes being made to Huntington Beach,

especially in and near Downtown. The proposal for the Strand north of

the pier is the next.

These changes being touted by city leaders are necessary

improvements to keep Surf City an attractive destination for tourists

and visitors. That point is difficult to dispute. But opponents who

miss the city’s more rough-and-tumble days see a loss of “soul” in a

city they don’t quite recognize, and one that they don’t find as

inviting.

Progress, of course, is rarely easy. It is therefore up to city

leaders, as well as those businesses involved, to explain their case

continually to residents so the benefits, and the needs, for change

are clear.

In the case of the Hyatt, the financial rationale is obvious. Add

to that the lack of a comparative center or resort in the area, and

it is easy to see how the city stands to win with the Hyatt’s

opening.

It is progress, after all. But in moving ahead, whatever touches

can be kept, or even made better, will always be welcomed.

Happily, there seem to be plenty of touches at the Hyatt that are

luxuriously comforting.