The long-embattled Shade Redondo hotel has hit yet another snag on its way to completion, as a burst water pipe has severely damaged at least two dozen completed hotel rooms.
“It looks like a crime scene over there,” said owner Mike Zislis.
The rooms, he said, were done — wallpapered, tiled, with shower stalls, glass and fixtures all put in place. He estimates the cost of the damage to be “a few million” dollars.
“I think I must have found the buried tiki head Greg Brady found in Hawaii,” he said, referring to a bad luck charm found in on the beach in an old episode of “The Brady Brunch”.
Given that his crews have already found railroad tracks, oil-contaminated groundwater and a long-forgotten seawall on the site under the forthcoming hotel, a tiki torch would be just another drop in the bad-omen bucket.
The effect of the delays had already set back the hotel from its projected Summer 2015 open to April 2016. Now, Zislis projects that this could set the project back as many as four months, depending on the extent of the damage.
The lengthy holdups have had a financial impact on the developer. In December, Zislis estimated that the project’s budget ballooned from $14 million to $26 million as a result of delays and redesigns.
Shade Redondo is composed of two buildings; an event and culinary building on the project’s south side, and a hotel building on the north. The event building, Zislis said, “is coming along,” and should be done in 60 days. That is still behind the projected late March open date Zislis gave late last year.
“It’s all good,” Zislis said. “I feel it’ll be just as difficult for everyone else [building] down there — it’s unique land. We found a railroad no one knew about, a seawall no one knew about, oil no one knew about…I’m sure they’re going to find something by the pier, an old ship or something.”
