Business travelers to Burbank will have another hotel option open to them when a proposed 210-room Hilton Garden Inn hotel is completed in a year. FPG Development Group of Palm Beach, Fla., has submitted plans to the city for the five-story lodge on the southwest corner of San Fernando Road and Verdugo Avenue south of downtown. The hotel will add beds to a market with a healthy 77 percent occupancy rate. It also will be in proximity to a 492-room Holiday Inn two blocks north on San Fernando Road and a 166-suite Residence Inn a block over on First Street. FPG builds and operates hotels nationwide, including in the Los Angeles area and Silicon Valley. President Richard Mielbye said the company did extensive research and is confident the Burbank market can handle another hotel. “We like to go where the business community is vibrant and there are great amenities that a lot of our folks would use,” he said. The decision by FPG to build the hotel follows steps the city has taken in the past year to boost its tourism and hospitality industry by promoting itself as an affordable alternative to other cities – given its close proximity to destinations like Universal Studios Hollywood and “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.” Burbank hotels are a combination of large chains, smaller boutique hotels and budget hotels. They are congregated primarily near Bob Hope Airport, close to downtown or along major corridors such as Olive Avenue. In October 2011, the city’s hotels with 25 rooms or more approved creating a tourism business improvement district. One percent of the city’s 11 percent transient occupancy tax goes toward marketing the city to visitors. The district is governed by a board with representatives from the hotels, the city, the Bob Hope Airport and the Warner Bros. Studios VIP Tour. The board is currently working to get a consultant to come up with a logo, website and a marketing campaign. Tom Whalen, general manager of boutique Hotel Amarano near Warner Bros. Studios, is chairman of the district’s board. He said he was aware of the new Hilton project and thought it would be a good addition as the tourism district works to promote the city to both domestic and international travelers. “We are already in the planning stages and within the next few months we will have an idea of where we are going to promote, where advertising will go and what trade shows we will attend,” he said. Expanding brand FPG Development has built hotels for major hotel companies such as Marriot International Inc. of Washington D.C., Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide of Stamford, Conn. and Hyatt Hotel Corp. of Chicago, Mielbye said. Projects in its pipeline include a Cambria Suites Hotel in El Segundo, a Courtyard by Marriott in San Jose and a Hilton Garden Inn in Bellevue, Wash. “These are major brands with name recognition and speak of quality,” Mielbye said. “That is something we are all about.” However, it turns over management of its properties to Island Hospitality, an affiliated third-party operator that shares an address in Palm Beach. Island Hospitality operates Embassy Suites Valencia in Santa Clarita, and other hotels in Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego counties. FPG begins the Burbank project at a time when the Hilton Garden Inn brand is expanding. There are more than 500 of the hotels around the world with several hundred more under construction or in the planning stages, according to the Hilton Garden Inn website. Hilton Garden Inn is owned by Hilton Worldwide, a global hospitality company based in McLean, Va. In the Los Angeles region there are Hilton Garden Inns in Hollywood, Montebello and El Segundo near Los Angeles International Airport. The Hilton Garden Inn brand falls between a full-service hotel and a limited service hotel, said Bruce Baltin, senior vice president and hospitality industry consultant at PKF Consulting USA in Los Angeles. A typical Garden Inn has 125 to 175 rooms. Hotels have a signature glass-walled pavilion in the reception area with shops and a lounge with a large-screen TV and fireplace for guests. There is a 24 hour business center, fitness room and Wi-Fi in every room. A Garden Inn fits in well with the Burbank market because the hotel caters primarily to business travelers. “Burbank is mostly business travel with the (film and television) studios and the industrial companies along San Fernando Road, with some spill over (from tourists) during the summer,” Baltin said. Neighborhood renewal The hotel also will bring new construction to a stretch of San Fernando Road south of the downtown core that the city has targeted for revitalization. Once a scraggily strip of car repair shops and other commercial buildings, the corridor from Verdugo Road to Alameda Avenue has improved in recent years. The city has revitalized the area with antique streetlights, landscaping and benches. New businesses also have come in, while in 2007 the Burbank Senior Artists Colony, a retirement home where seniors can write, draw, act and sing, was built on another corner of San Fernando and Verudo roads. “We have laid the groundwork for them to come in and put in something nice on private property,” said Deputy City Manager Joy Forbes. “The hotel is just perfect for that area.” The hotel will be constructed on a nearly one-acre site that is currently occupied by small shops, a storefront church and an independent car dealership. Mielbye said FPG is currently under contract to buy the property. The developer still must receive approval from the city planning board and City Council for a conditional use permit to serve alcohol in an on-site lounge and a variance on the required number of parking spaces.
Garden Spot?
