Long Beach : Hotel at Jergins Site Delayed

Construction of a 21-story luxury hotel on the Jergins Trust Building site has been postponed, but demolition of the historic ocean-view office building is continuing, its owner has announced.

It is the second hotel project cancelled or delayed this week in part because of an expected glut of hotel rooms in the downtown area.

Owners of the Queensway Bay Hilton announced Tuesday that they are calling off a two-phase expansion that would have added 350 rooms to their 200-room hotel. On Jan. 16, ground was broken for the addition, but the Hilton announced this week that “market conditions” do not justify spending $20 million on that phase.

A spokesman for Perini Land and Development Corp., which is developing the Jergins site, said the company has indefinitely delayed May ground breaking for a 470-room hotel that would have replaced the 67-year-old Jergins at the corner of Pine Avenue and Ocean Boulevard.

Perini still hopes to build a hotel on the property, but a potential glut of hotel rooms downtown has dictated a delay in construction, said Thomas Welch of Perini.

Welch said Perini had long considered in its planning the development of three other major downtown hotels--the existing Hyatt Regency a block south of the Jergins, a planned Sheraton a block east and a Ramada Renaissance hotel just across Ocean Boulevard from the Jergins.

But a more recent proposal to build a 528-room Westin hotel nearby “makes it look like there might be a glut in hotel rooms here. . . . We were not aware (until recently) that the site directly behind us would be developed as a hotel.”

Westin backers are negotiating with the city Tidelands Agency for rights to build a hotel, two office buildings, shops, restaurants, and a park on 14.8 acres across Pine Avenue from the Hyatt. An environmental impact report on the project is scheduled to be considered by the city Planning Commission Jan. 30.

“Feasibility studies show this market won’t come to true maturity until sometime in 1990 at the very earliest,” Welch said. “Whether hotel or office building, anybody who comes in before then will be just selecting sites and hoping their project will break even.”