Grand Waimea Hotel: "Where guest relations have a whole new meaning"
Fox hopes to have found the Melrose Place for the millennium when the networks new drama, North Shore, premieres. This OC clone is set at the fictional Grand Waimea Hotel,on the beautiful North Shore of Hawaii. Oh yeah, and this 17,000-square-foot "fictional" hotel/sound stage was built to the tune of $850,000 real American dollars.
Fake hotel designer, the Emmy-award winning Michael Hanan, tried to clarify his budgetary needs:
"I didn't have another hotel in mind and wanted the set to represent Hawaii's basic elements of water, stone, sky and greens,"
850k gone that is your story? Sounds like Mr. Hanan is going to have a lotta `splainin' to do if this show bombs and the suits start circling.
North Shore didn't go full faux. Fox tried to use some of their surroundings to ground this drama in realism. Some scenes were shot at the only real resort on the North Shore of Hawaii, TurtleBay Resort. While other footage comes from the close by Ko Olina Marriott.
Finally, to make sure the audience bought the shows authenticity, the producers cast Richard Wright as the hotel owner, who as we all know, is a hotelier extraordinaire from the Big Apple.
· Carpenter’s booked for series set [Star Bulletin]
· Fox's North Shore Site [Fox]
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