Agoura Hotels on Horizon

A 5.7-acre land parcel along the 101 freeway between Calabasas and Westlake Village has been purchased by a Texas hotel developer for $6.5 million. The Huntington Hotel Group of Irving, Texas plans to build two connecting hotels on the Agoura Hills property, offering a total of 225 rooms, said John Battle, principal at Lee & Associates LA North/Ventura office, who handled both sides of the transaction along with his colleagues Mike Tingus and Grant Fulkerson. Selleck Development Group Inc. of Westlake Village had owned the property, on the south side of the freeway at 29508 Roadside Drive, for two decades but never pursued development. The land is not yet entitled for development but the city of Agoura Hills has expressed interest in a tax-revenue generating use for the site such as a hotel, Battle said. “Huntington Hotel Group specializes in developing in markets with high barriers to entry,” said Battle, “and they liked the Conejo Valley for that reason. It is an unusually large parcel for the area, and the location offers freeway frontage as well as easy access to the 101 and to Malibu, so this property really checked all the boxes.” Plans have not been finalized, but the developer would like to put two hotels on the site – one aimed at the extended-stay market and one conventional overnight property – and connect them through a shared lobby. A February report issued by the Los Angeles Economic Development Corp. put hotel occupancy in the San Fernando Valley at 75.2 percent with rates averaging $111. The figures come from 2013, the most recent year of available data. Huntington Hotel Group has developed 13 hotels over the past 14 years, and operates a portfolio of 24 hotels totaling more than 3,400 rooms in California, Florida, Kansas, Maryland, Texas and Virginia.