Casa Munras Garden Hotel now Part of Larkspur Chain

• 
  SAVE
• 
  SHARE
• 
  TEXT SIZE
• 
  PRINT
• 
  COMMENT
• 
  PDF

. October 14, 2008

By Marie Vasari

The Monterey County Herald, Calif.

MONTEREY, CA, November 19, 2005. Casa Munras Garden Hotel is no longer. It's now Casa Munras, a Larkspur Hotel. The landmark Monterey property, one of the city's most historic buildings, was acquired Friday by Larkspur Hospitality. The purchase, announced Friday morning, marks the 22nd hotel for the rapidly expanding Corte Madera-based group. The property, with a $13.9 million asking price, was previously owned by Casa Munras Hotel Partners, L.P., a San Diego-based limited partnership. Larkspur, founded in 1996 in a suburb of Portland, Ore., made its name operating hotels geared toward upscale business travelers. Since then, the company has expanded across Northern California and Washington. The Casa Munras hotel marks the southernmost expansion of the network.

Location, according to Larkspur Hospitality chairman and CEO Karl Hoagland, was the driving factor. "We really like Monterey," Hoagland said. "It's a wonderful destination for a lot of our existing guests who stay at our hotels in the Bay Area and the Pacific Northwest." Monterey was particularly significant for the group, he said, as a move toward diversifying into the leisure travel market. "It's a leisure destination," he said, "that our guests would want to go visit." To that end, the group is looking toward Los Angeles and San Luis Obispo for expansion.

Casa Munras will become part of Larkspur Collection hotels, a group of independent Larkspur-owned properties that Hoagland describes as unique in their legacy, architecture or location. Among the hotels are the historic 1926 Sainte Claire in San Jose, formerly a Hyatt property, and the Lodge at Tiburon near San Francisco Bay. Larkspur plans to upgrade the hotel in phases, with the first being the bedding, carpets, paint, in-room DVD players, two-line speakerphones, a business center, free DVD library and an upgrade of the bar. Most of the changes should be done by summer.

More extensive renovations are planned for late fall or winter 2006. Those changes could include addition of a spa, expanded meeting space, modification of the pool area and addition of hot tubs. Larkspur expects to spend about $1 million on the initial modifications, said Hoagland, and about $3 million on the later work. "We want to preserve the history of the place while bringing the hotel in line with the service and comfort levels of Larkspur," said Hoagland. "This hotel has a tremendous history -- we always want to preserve and protect that." The hotel will name a general manager in the coming weeks, but Hoagland said most of the staff would remain on board.

Casa Munras was built around, and incorporates, the original 1825 hacienda of Don Esteban Munras, the last Spanish diplomat to California. The 4.5-acre property includes six meeting rooms with close to 5,000 square feet of meeting and banquet facilities, and numerous leased retail shops. Casa Munras was the first home to be built outside of the Presidio of Monterey.

ABOUT LARKSPUR HOSPITALITY

Established in 1996, Larkspur Hospitality is a rapidly growing hotel company based in Corte Madera, California. Larkspur owns and operates 21 hotels comprising three brands (Larkspur Landing, Hilton Garden Inn and its collection of three and four star independent hotels known as The Larkspur Collection) in suburban areas of Northern California and the Pacific Northwest. The company acquired the four-star RiverPlace Hotel in Portland, Oregon, in July 2003, the Toll House Hotel in Los Gatos, California in December 2003, The Lodge at Tiburon in Tiburon, California in May 2004 and The Sainte Claire in San Jose, California in June 2005. In 2005, Larkspur converted five existing hotels to its flagship Larkspur Landing brand, bringing the total number of Larkspur Landings to 11. The company also manages the Pruneyard Inn in Campbell, California. For additional information on Larkspur Hospitality and its affiliates, visit www.larkspurhospitality.com.

To see more of the Monterey County Herald, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.montereyherald.com.

Copyright (c) 2005, The Monterey County Herald, Calif.

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

For information on republishing this content, contact us at (800) 661-2511 (U.S.), (213) 237-4914 (worldwide), fax (213) 237-6515, or e-mail [email protected].