Santa Monica Hotel Plans May Be Dropped : Decision on Direction for Colorado Place Will Be Made by New General Partnership

The 400-room hotel and health club that was proposed in Santa Monica as part of the $200-million Colorado Place may not be built after all, according to Paul Giuntini, president of Pasadena-based Southmark Pacific Corp., which has just purchased Becket Investment Corp.’s general partnership interest in the office-restaurant complex at Cloverfield Boulevard and 26th Street.

“We’re in the process of analyzing Phase 2,” Giuntini said. “We’re studying the feasibility of the hotel. We may want to scale it down or even eliminate it.” He expects a decision on this within the next 45 days.

As planned, Phase 2 would consist of 350,000 square feet of offices, the hotel and health club. The $90-million first phase--including three interconnected office buildings with sub-level parking totaling more than 1 million square feet of space--was completed last spring.

Designed by Welton Becket Associates as a complex for its own headquarters and other offices as well as an array of restaurants and food specialty shops in an area called “The Market,” Colorado Place was developed by Becket as principal investor and the Kranz Interests as limited partner. The Kranz Interests will retain the limited-partner position, and Becket plans to maintain its offices there.

Southmark Pacific is a California subsidiary of Southmark Corp. of Dallas, one of the largest diversified public real estate companies in the United States.

The subsidiary was formed four years ago. “But we’ve become much more active this past year,” Giuntini said. Among its several acquisitions in California was the Anaheim Hills Development Co. and its 2,400 acres in Anaheim and Orange. “Our management philosophy is that California is a tremendous growth market,” Guintini added.