No one in the City of Hollister government, not City Manager Bill Avera, not Development Services Director Bryan Swanson, can say with any assurance when the new Marriott Hotel to be located on Gateway Drive, will open for business. What they can say, though, is that it is nearly a year behind schedule.
Swanson said San Jose-based Lotus Management is the developer of the hotel. He confirmed to BenitoLink that no one, which may include Lotus Management itself, knows the completion date. He said the building permit was issued Dec. 22, 2014.
Avera said that as of two months ago the project was a least nine months behind schedule.
“We’ve had four superintendents on the job and one construction company,” Swanson said. “The construction company just walked out, probably a month-and-a-half ago.”
Swanson said only the Patel family, the developers and owners of the approximately 80-room hotel near Tiffany Ford on Hollister’s north side, know why the construction company pulled out. He said workers are back, but did not know how many were actually on the job. Greg Johnson, building inspector, said the city has conducted a structural inspection of all four floors. He said inspectors have been trying to get the stairwells finished for the past three months.
Swanson said he didn’t know if Lotus Management would be forthcoming about the problems that have plagued the project. He said the city has no control over who the developer hires to construct the building. Messages left by BenitoLink with Lotus Management were not returned.
“We have gone above and beyond what our inspectors are supposed to be doing,” Swanson said. “They call us out for a plumbing inspection, and then they’ll say, ‘can you look at this or that.’ We’re going further than the basic inspection with them, but we cannot act as the construction manager.”
Johnson said there have been a number of problems.
“One was the use of ABS (plastic) piping in a four-story building, which we said in the beginning could not be done,” he said. “It’s all in the plans, cast iron only. They decided they wanted to use ABS. They put it in and called for inspection, and then they had to tear it all out.”
Johnson said the issue of plastic piping is a fire safety matter, especially in a high-rise. He recounted the 1980 MGM Grand fire in Las Vegas, where 87 people died. Most died from of smoke inhalation because the fire spread quickly between floors through plastic pipes.
“One of the things we try to do is try to make sure that all penetrations floor-to-floor are constructed properly,” he said.
Johnson said the project has not gone well from the beginning. He said that after the permit was issued in 2014, it took five months to put the underground plumbing in place.
“After that, the foundation was more than three months later,” he said. “They just started out wrong and it just kept going. Sometimes there’s nobody working; sometimes they are. Lately, they’ve had more of a crew than before.”
Since the original contractor left, Lotus has taken on the project themselves, Johnson said. Lotus Management is an $80 million, family-owned development company that offers investment opportunities in hotel brands, such as Intercontinental Hotel Group, Wyndham Hotels, Best Western, Marriott, and Choice Hotels. It currently owns and operates 18 hotels on the West Coast.
“From the city’s perspective, we are excited about this project because there is a need for additional hotel rooms,” Swanson said. “We are trying to do as much as we can to assist them on completing the project. Unfortunately, we can’t manage the project and we can’t tell them how to build it. We can only tell them the plans were submitted and how they were approved and need to be followed.”