In Glendale, 857-Unit Hotel Rises Downtown

Vancouver-based Onni Group has proposed an 857-room hotel for downtown Glendale, to rise adjacent to an office building at 611 N. Brand Blvd., according to Urbanize.LA. The Canadian developer, which recently built apartment towers in downtown Los Angeles, announced in August that its latest project would be constructed as a pair of buildings on either side of a 1970s-built office tower. The two new buildings will house the hotel rooms, plus 7,500 square feet of retail and restaurant space, wrapped around the office structure. Onni purchased the nearly 400,000-square-foot office tower and its associated parking areas for $83 million in 2017. It was more than 90 percent occupied at the time, according to a contemporaneous Business Journal report. Co-working operator WeWork signed a 70,000-plus-square-foot lease at the office building earlier this year. The hotel plan is currently going through the design review stage. If the project proceeds, the Onni towers would likely become the largest hotel in Glendale, far outpacing such recent hotel projects as the 173-room Hyatt Place at 225 Wilson Ave., the 145-suite Residence Inn at 145 N. Louise St. and the 85-key Aloft at 1100 N. Brand Blvd. It will also stand larger than any hotel in the Tri-Cities area, besting the 379 rooms at The Langham in Pasadena and 488 rooms at Marriott Burbank Airport. It is not clear which hotel brand Onni’s behemoth hospitality complex in downtown Glendale would assume. Before proposing a hotel at the site, the developer considered building a 600-unit apartment complex there. In addition to this project, Onni’s Los Angeles-area portfolio includes former Los Angeles Times hub Times Mirror Square and Wilshire Courtyard on the Miracle Mile, a complex which, until recently, had been home to the headquarters of The Hollywood Reporter, Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf and Los Angeles Business Journal. After Onni purchased the property for $630 million in July, WeWork swiftly announced that it would sign on to bring its co-working office spaces to four floors at the 5750 Wilshire Blvd. complex.