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Hoteliers

Oh, What a Tangled Web Hoteliers, Developers and Beanie Babies Weave

January 23, 2007 at 11:00 AM | 0 Comments

Ty Warner the man who made gazillions of dollars from manufacturing and selling Beanie Babies has let the Miramar Hotel in Montecito, Calif. go to shit.

Well actually, Warner bought the hotel from none other than Ian Schrager in 2005 after Schrager himself stalled on the property for six years due to lack of funds. Schrager had wanted to make it a funky 213-room hotel (was this Gramercy Park Hotel before the Gramercy Park Hotel was the Gramercy Park Hotel?) When Warner bought it for $43 mil he wanted to make the Miramar one of America's premiere resorts. That plan never went through as he felt "extreme bias" from two influential community groups.

Now the hotel is looking to be acquired by Rick Caruso, the developer behind the hugely successful Grove shopping center in LA where you can always spot at least two celebrities--has-beens or current--while shopping at the Gap and catching a movie. And already it looks like Caruso has gotten further than the hotel's previous owners since the community likes his ideas of turning the resort into a more family-friendly place. Yes, a Schrager-inspired scary gothic sex castle is not the right place to take kids. But couldn't Ty Warner and his Beanie Babies have put a family-friendly spin on the hotel?

Related Stories:
· Developer Caruso said to be buying Miramar Hotel [LA Times]
· Ty selling Miramar to Caruso [Santa Barbara Independent]