Hotel San Diego Is Purchased for $6 Million : Historic Building Will Undergo a Renovation

SAN DIEGO —  The historic Hotel San Diego has been sold for $6 million to an Encinitas-based partnership that plans to renovate and repaint the 227-room structure.

Built in 1915 by pioneer developer John D. Spreckels, the hotel was purchased by Western Sun Hotels-Hotel San Diego Partnership from George Tate. General partners of the new owner group are Leonard Glass and Ray Fruscella, both of San Diego. The group acquired a 99-year lease of the hotel’s land, a full block bounded by Broadway, E Street, Union and State streets.

The late Vincent Miranda, who owned a chain of adult movie theaters, and Tate acquired the hotel in 1974. Tate bought Miranda’s interest in the hotel after Miranda died in 1985. To help finance the sale of the hotel to the group headed by Glass and Fruscella, Tate took back notes totaling $4.8 million.

Glass and Fruscella own or operate five other hotels in California and Arizona, including the newly renovated 136-room Howard Johnson motel on 7th Avenue at Ash Street that reopened last October. Glass and Fruscella’s company, Western Sun Hotels, also plan to begin construction on a 177-room all-suite hotel in Rancho Bernardo later this year.

Glass said his partnership will spend $2.2 million renovating the Hotel San Diego, giving it a new gray exterior paint job and interior carpeting. Average room rate at the refurbished hotel will be $50 to $55 per night.

Ron Buckley, secretary of the city Planning Department’s historical site board said the hotel’s “Chicago-style” architecture by Harrison Albright is notable for its two-story ground floor and lobby.

Buckley said the hotel was built along stylistic lines similar to three other south-of-Broadway buildings: the Spreckels Theater, the old San Diego Union and the former Bank of America, now Home Federal Savings’ headquarters building. All were developed by Spreckels.

Glass said his group plans to raze a 10,000-square-foot office building next to the hotel next year after the leases expire. In its place, the group may someday build a parking structure and more hotel rooms, he said.

The new owners will liquidate the collection of MGM movie studio props and antiques that now decorate the Hotel San Diego.