The Crowne Plaza Hanalei, one of Mission Valley’s oldest hotels, has sold for nearly $49 million.

Built in 1959 and last renovated in 2006, the 419-room property was sold to a private client of Irvine-based Brighton Management, which manages hotels in California, Colorado, Florida, Connecticut and New Mexico.

The only other San Diego County hotels in its portfolio are National City and a Holiday Inn in Oceanside.

Brighton plans to undertake a significant renovation of the aging 10-acre property but is not far enough along to provide more details on the scope or investment, said special account manager David Wei.


The seller, Hanalei Associates, which has Multi-Ventures, Inc. as its managing member, originally purchased the hotel in 1996 for $14.6 million.

“I’ve been in the hotel business for 30-plus years and I simply decided it was in my best interest to get out of the business,” said Robert Payne, CEO of Multi-Ventures a real estate development and hotel company that previously owned the Mission Valley Hilton. “I saw it as an opportunity for new ownership to take over and expand the facility and I wish them luck.”

Brokering the sale were CBRE Hotels’ Bob Kaplan & Rod Apodaca, senior vice presidents in the Newport Beach office.

The purchase price, at $116,000 per room, is a relative bargain, given that the average sales price for San Diego County hotels this year was $170,000, said Alan Reay, president of Orange County-based Atlas Hospitality Group.


The Hanalei, he noted, is the largest hotel in terms of the number of rooms, to sell this year in Southern California.

“In Mission Valley, where properties are going for well over $200,000 per room today, this purchase gives the new owners a big margin for adding improvements to the hotel,” Reay said. “They bought the asset below market price because it’s under-performing the market, and Brighton is an excellent management company and can come in and renovate the hotel and increase the revenue.”

When it first opened in 1959, the Hanalei was originally known as Rancho Presidio, a 66-unit motor hotel. Seven years later, then hotelier Charles Brown spent $3.5 million to construct an eight-story addition. Another eight-story tower was built in 1979.


lori.weisberg@sduniontribune.com (619) 293-2251

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