Hopes high for hotel

Friday's grand opening latest step in revitalization of Railroad Square
June 23, 2002

By MARY FRICKER
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

Santa Rosa opens the doors this week to a hotel and conference center that after 30 years transforms a blighted field into a Wine Country destination in the city's center.

Amid last-minute construction in preparation for the grand opening Friday, the Vineyard Creek Hotel, Spa & Conference Center welcomed its first guests this weekend -- NASCAR enthusiasts attending the races at Infineon Raceway, the former Sears Point.

Craig Elving, a guest at the Courtyard Marriott across the street, checked out the new hotel Saturday afternoon. "I saw the flags flying," he said, "and I thought it must be open."

Elving, a 35-year-old telecommunications engineer who has lived in China for the past two years, said he was considering switching hotels "just for the novelty of it."

"How often do you get to sleep in a hotel bed that's never been slept in?" he asked.

After inspecting a room, he said he was impressed.

"The bathroom amenities and the appointments are nice -- definitely not a standard room," he said.

Elving didn't switch because the Vineyard Creek will be closed until after its grand opening Friday.

The opening culminates three decades of planning and debate over the biggest downtown revitalization project since the Santa Rosa Plaza in 1982.

With the largest meeting facility in Sonoma County, Vineyard Creek catapults downtown into status as a magnet for corporate gatherings and banquets. And for the first time, it gives the city a tourism hub leading into Wine Country.

"This is going to be a real plus for us," said former Santa Rosa City Manager Kenneth R. Blackman, who retired two years ago. The hotel conference center is being named after him in recognition of his longtime support of the project.

After the Grace Brothers brewery closed at Third and Wilson streets in the 1960s, the property deteriorated into a trash-strewn field on the edge of a concrete channel carrying Santa Rosa Creek.

Contaminated by the lead from piles of discarded car batteries, it was abandoned.

But after false starts and setbacks, after the spending of $35 million in public and private money, the three-story resort with signature Mediterranean architecture and an 80-foot-wide waterfall is taking its place alongside a reawakened Railroad Square and a restored Santa Rosa Creek.

The hotel center joins the refurbished train depot, the new creek promenade and illuminated pedestrian bridge, the coming farmers market and international food and wine center -- to convince tourists there's more to Wine Country than Napa.

Bucking recession

Opening a hotel and conference center during a recession -- and less than a year after the tourism industry was devastated by the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 -- is not for the faint-hearted, experts said.

The occupancy rate for hotels and motels in Sonoma and Napa counties in the first four months of this year was 53 percent, down 12 percent from the same period last year, according to tourism officials.

"It's a difficult time to be opening a new hotel," said Bill Comstock, general manager of the DoubleTree Hotel in Rohnert Park.

But Vineyard Creek developer Norman Rosenblatt is optimistic.

"The economy is coming back. We've already booked more than $2 million in business, and we don't even have a finished facility to show people," Rosenblatt said. "The time is just right."

In two weeks, the first conference group will arrive, and their visit captures the promise of the center, which is to be a fulcrum for tourists to experience all of Sonoma County.

The owners of about 50 California travel agencies plan a day of meetings at Vineyard Creek, a Saturday night wine dinner at Michel-Schlumberger Winery in Healdsburg and a Sunday hot-air balloon trip from Rodney Strong Vineyards in Healdsburg.

"Our interest is in Wine Country," said Jack Henry, who will be leading the group. Henry is an executive with Carlson Wagonlit Travel in Minneapolis, one of the world's largest travel companies.

Vineyard Creek joins a flood of more than 1,000 new hotel rooms and timeshare units hitting Sonoma County between 2001 and 2003 -- nearly a 40 percent increase in accommodations.

But Rosenblatt and others believe the mass of new rooms is needed to establish Sonoma County as a tourist destination equal to Napa County.

"Napa Valley has the name. A lot of people out of the area don't know anything about Sonoma," Henry said.

It will be a challenge for Vineyard Creek to make itself known in an industry dominated by popular chains, some experts said.

Challenge for independent

"It's a marketing problem, and it's a challenge for them," Henry said. "When you have a chain hotel like Marriott or Hilton or Radisson, travel agents know it. And when someone is going into an area, they tend to pick out names familiar to them."

To that end, Rosenblatt and The Rim Corp. of Modesto, which will operate the hotel and conference center, have been running ads in tourist publications, going to trade shows and making sales calls nationwide.

They are promoting a Vineyard Creek that is "in the heart of California's famed Wine Country and a short walk to Railroad Square, which features a delightful collection of antique shops, gift shops and unique restaurants," according to one promotion.

Room prices range from $169 to $240 a night. By comparison, just across the street is the more modestly priced Courtyard by Marriott, owned by The Rim Corp., where rooms rent for $30 to $40 less.

Of the 155 rooms at Vineyard Creek, 20 are suites. One hundred rooms have king-sized beds, 55 have two queen-sized beds. Many overlook courtyard gardens and the swimming pool.

The rooms have 9-foot and 10-foot ceilings, down comforters, aromatherapy and daily newspaper delivery. They also include robes and slippers, fresh flowers, turndown tea service, private minibars, hair dryers, irons, safes and high-speed Internet connections.

The conference complex features a spa that offers facials and manicures, professional wedding and meeting planners, a health and fitness center and a grand ballroom with 16-foot ceilings.

Seafood, creekside fare

A seafood restaurant, Brasserie de la Mer, will open the second week in July, run by the same company that has McCormick & Kuleto's in San Francisco's Ghiradelli Square and Spenger's Fresh Grotto in Berkeley.

On the creek path will be a food pavilion selling food both to hotel guests and to the public strolling along the creek.

For conferences, the center has 15 meeting rooms and can accommodate 1,000 people. The largest banquet room seats 540 people. By comparison, the largest room at the DoubleTree Hotel seats 500 and in Santa Rosa the largest room at the Flamingo Resort Hotel and Conference Center seats 450.

The interior, decorated to capture the feeling of vines and redwoods, features greens, burgundies, purples, creams, eggplant, persimmon and terra cotta colors, said Rosenblatt's wife, Nan Rosenblatt, who is in charge of interior design.

In the lobby, the fabrics are several shades of purple and green. The floor is concrete tiles cast in a basket weave pattern of greens and beige by Sonoma Cast Stone in Schellville. The lobby carpet is from Nepal.

In the guest rooms, the bed canopies and backdrops are made of a hand-screened batik fabric with a pattern of quail and grapes. It was designed by Barbara Beckman, an internationally known fabric designer from Sonoma.

All of the art in the hotel is by Sonoma County artists. The architect is Hornberger & Worstell of San Francisco.

The Vineyard Creek Hotel is a Preferred Hotel, meaning it is one of about 110 independently owned luxury hotels in 20 countries certified by Preferred Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc. of Chicago, which conducts an annual, unannounced inspection of facilities. One other Sonoma County hotel, the Sonoma Mission Inn & Spa, has the Preferred Hotel designation.

When the Vineyard Creek Hotel, Spa & Conference Center opens, 61/2 years will have passed since the Rosenblatts, boutique hotel developers from San Francisco, first approached the city of Santa Rosa about building an upscale hotel and convention center on a rundown lot west of the freeway.

The Rosenblatts own the Inn at Union Square in San Francisco and the Garden Court Hotel in Palo Alto.

Vineyard Creek is expected to bring guests who will spend more than $15 million a year on such items as lodging, food, entertainment, shopping and car rentals, according to a city study.

It will employ 255 people.

For downtown business owners, the project promises benefits that will extend citywide.

"They've done what they promised to do -- put up a first-class facility with enough banquet accommodations to spill over to the others," said Claus Neumann, owner of Hotel La Rose in Railroad Square and an early critic of the Vineyard Creek project. "I think this will be good for all of us."

Staff writer Sam Kennedy contributed to this report. You can reach Staff Writer Mary Fricker at 521-5241 or mfricker@pressdemocrat.com.

Conference center seeks to build national reputation

Marketing campaign pushing Wine Country as destination
June 23, 2002

By MARY FRICKER
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

A marketing blitz is spreading the word about Santa Rosa's new Vineyard Creek Hotel, Spa and Conference Center.

To reach regional travelers, Vineyard Creek is running advertisements featuring its giant walnut tree and luxury accommodations in publications like San Francisco magazine, Meetings West magazine, Association News, and the Los Angeles Times, according to sales and marketing director Mark O'Neal.

"Our first goal is to tap into regional short-term bookings for the six months June through December," O'Neal said, since national groups usually schedule events a year or more in advance.

A key focus of the marketing effort is groups that will rent 75 to 100 rooms for three to five nights and use a "sizable amount of our meeting space," O'Neal said.

He and his staff are working with Preferred Hotels & Resorts Worldwide in Chicago and Carino Collection in New York, companies that sell upscale boutique-style hotel business worldwide. They've attended trade shows in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Portland. They're working with Lane Marketing in Portland, a national public relations firm.

"The Wine Country is the predominant feature of our selling strategy," O'Neal said. "We're pushing Railroad Square, higher-end wineries, artwork, the creek."

In cooperation with the Santa Rosa Convention and Visitors Bureau, Enterprise Rent-a-Car, Pure Luxury Limousine and others, O'Neal and his staff recently participated in two two-day marathon sales efforts.

In Santa Rosa, they visited mainly wineries and Telecom Valley companies, where they made more than 100 sales, O'Neal said.

In San Francisco, they visited Wells Fargo & Co., Bank of America and Mosaic Event Management, a company that handles hundreds of corporate conferences and events each year. There they landed a four-day convention of 150 people in Barclay Bank's global investors group for 2004, O'Neal said.

Last week Vineyard Creek staff went to the Affordable Meetings West trade show in San Jose with the Santa Rosa visitors bureau and other local businesses. Last month they all went to the Mayfair trade show at Moscone Center.

"The No. 1 question we get from the media and meeting planners is, 'What's new?'" said Mo Renfro, executive director of the Santa Rosa Convention & Visitors Bureau. "Now all of a sudden we have a story to tell. We have Vineyard Creek, the new Sheraton (at the Petaluma Marina), the Charles M. Schulz Museum, which is huge for us here ... we have the buzz now. We're happening."