Hyatt Hotels Corp. to Take Over Andaz Palm Springs Project

Construction of an unfinished downtown Palm Springs hotel at the center of planned legal action lodged by the city will resume later this year under a new name, the developer announced Thursday. Formally known as the Andaz Hotel, the project located at 400 N. Palm Canyon Drive is slated to be rebranded as Thompson Palm Springs, a subsidiary of Hyatt Hotels Corp., according to the Hall Group. Construction is slated to wrap up sometime next year. "We look forward to collaborating with Hall Group to re-engage and reimagine this project, which is expected to fly the Thompson Hotels flag and further add to the growing number of properties within the Thompson Hotels portfolio throughout Southern California and across the country," said Kimo Bertram, Hyatt’s vice president of real estate and development. Thompson Palm Springs will offer 164 hotel rooms across a collection of small buildings. The property will also feature two outdoor pools, gardens, lounge areas and walking paths, along with a restaurant and bars located both indoors and outdoors and 6,000 feet of meeting and event space. "High-end" street-level retail stores are also planned. The Andaz was one of four unfinished hotels that the city of Palm Springs announced in March that it intended to seek legal action against, claiming the four stalled hotel projects had become a "nuisance to their neighborhoods and to the community at large." The others are the Dream Hotel on Amado Road, the Orchid Tree on Belardo Road and the TOVA on North Palm Canyon Drive. The Palm Springs City Council authorized the action in a bid to force the owners to complete the work. Attorneys working for the city would be ready to begin seeking the appointment of a court-ordered receiver, who would be tasked with "completing the hotels, or demolishing them if that is determined by the receiver and the court to be most appropriate," according to a city statement at the time. City officials said the targeted property owners would not lose their properties. The city does intend, however, for the owners to foot the bill for the costs of both the receivership process and the project completion process, whether that be finishing construction or demolishing what’s already been constructed. The Palm Springs City Council last month authorized staff to solicit bids for the demolition of the partially constructed buildings composing the TOVA at 1875 N. Palm Canyon Drive. The demolition will cost an estimated $280,000, according to a staff report. The status of the other two projects — the Dream Hotel and the Orchid Tree — was unclear.