Mike Zislis might just be having his best day at Shade Redondo in a long, long time.
He just finished his final walkthrough with the Redondo Beach Planning Department; he’s just days away from pouring his new hotel’s last two truckloads of concrete; and his hotel’s opening day is now just a few weeks away.
“Honestly, my blood pressure dropped 20 points today,” he said.
Shade Hotel Redondo Beach, the sister hotel to Zislis’ hugely popular Shade in Manhattan Beach, will open with a red carpet charity event on October 2, at 1 p.m.
On that day, Shade Redondo will host guests and football legends as the Los Angeles Rams take on the Arizona Cardinals, with proceeds from ticket sales going to the Los Angeles Rams Foundation.
Later that week, on October 7, Shade Redondo will host its first guests as part of a phased grand opening that will fill all of its 54 rooms within a month.
“I always open a business with a charity event,” Zislis said, noting that he originally hoped to open Shade in March with an event benefitting local school educational foundations.
However, a host of construction complications, from finding a long-buried seawall to striking contaminated oil to a flood that damaged half of the hotel’s rooms, delayed the project far beyond its original projected completion date. The obstacles were such that Zislis would joke that there must be a cursed tiki head somewhere on the property.
“But this is my best work…I think it’s going to be the event center of the South Bay,” Zislis said.
Shade Redondo 54 room, 34,390 square foot hotel building is topped with what Zislis calls the AquaDeck, an open-air rooftop pool overlooking the Port Royal Marina toward the Pacific Ocean.
Beside it is a three-story, 9,034 square foot culinary and event building that will include Sea Level, a “farm-to-table” concept restaurant headed by former Culinary Lab head chef Aaron Robbins.
“I just think it’s going to be fantastic,” Zislis said. “It’s right on the water’s edge…the views are unmatched.”
His only regret? “I still never found that tiki head buried under here,” he said.
Tickets for the Rams Legends Watch Party are $100, with $200 VIP packages available. See shaderb.com or www.shaderedondobeach.eventbrite.com for more information.
