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Thursday, Mar 28, 2024
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Friends Take Trip Back in Time to Open New Hotel

A 17-room lodge scheduled to break ground in Coronado at the end of this month will hardly make a blip on the radar screen of the county’s hotel room inventory.

That tally stands at some 54,000. But to the tony and tightly knit community of 24,000, the renovation of the century-old boarding home that had become a transients flophouse and haven for drug users is a significant project indeed.

Once known as Trant Manor, after the family that previously owned it, the historic building on a 13,000-square-foot lot at the corner of A Avenue and Ynez Place has been renamed the 1906 Lodge at Coronado Beach.

It is now owned by Trant Manor LLC, which includes three Coronado couples. Dave Gillingham, a real estate agent and property developer, is its managing partner; and his wife, Sue, is the project director. Their partners are Dr. Joe and Holly Jankiewicz and Dr. Mark and Pam Gould.

“Originally we planned to renovate the building and sell it as a home,” said Sue Gillingham. “But then Holly suggested we turn it into a boutique (hotel).”

In order to make the 5,000-square-foot, two-story property financially viable as a lodging facility, the owners decided they would need to erect an adjacent “guest bungalow,” she said.


A Lot Of Relief

For health and sanitation reasons, the city condemned and closed the house in 2001. The current owners acquired it in August 2004 for $2.3 million. Sue Gillingham declined to say what the tab for renovation and construction would be.

“But that will be considerably more than the purchase price,” she said.

As far as getting approval to operate a hotel in a residential zone and install an underground parking facility, the city, for its part, “has bent over backwards,” she added.

“They gave us relief on zoning,” Sue Gillingham said. “They gave us the kind of relief they’ve never given anyone.

“Part of the parking structure is under the city street. They’ve never given that right to anyone for private parking. There is only one public parking facility in Coronado that is under a city street, just a bit.”

To fit the new 11-room bungalow onto the lot, the LLC was also granted an exemption to the city’s 5-foot easement ruling and is allowed to build three feet from a neighboring property.

The historic designation status of the lodge helped with the approval process, but the Gillinghams’ real estate track record also helped.

“Dave Gillingham has a wonderful reputation as a developer, as does Sue, and now they’ve got this fabulous product to work with , the lodge,” said Susan Keith, the chairwoman of the Coronado Historic Resource Commission, the city’s historic preservation arm. “It was a community sore spot that was run-down and had a bad reputation. And here came this group that wanted to refurbish it and clean it up and make it beautiful again.”

A retired Navy officer, Dave Gillingham began investing in Coronado real estate while still on active duty.

“In the early 1970s he sold a Corvette to do a down payment on a condo,” said Sue Gillingham. “He and a Navy buddy purchased that, and then they purchased another three rentals and eventually turned them over.”

During the last 25 years or so, the Gillinghams, who married in 1981, have renovated and resold or developed some 40 homes, most of them in Coronado, she said.

Sue Gillingham, a specialist in information systems and project management, has held executive positions at General Dynamics, Hughes Aircraft Co. and Computer Sciences Corp.


First Things First

Topping the list of reconstruction tasks is installing steel beams underneath the lodge so a basement and the underground parking garage for 18 cars can be built.

“We don’t want the guests to have to fight for parking on the street,” Sue Gillingham said.

To install bathrooms in all of the original structure’s eight bedrooms, remodeling will be done to reduce the number to six bedrooms.

It is believed that the property was one of the last to be designed as a team effort by noted San Diego architects William Hebbard and Irving Gill. Jeff Dreyfus of Charlottesville, Va.-based Bushman Dreyfus Architects is the project architect. The bungalow will be designed in the same mission style as the original structure.

The lodge’s parlor, dining room and central staircase will be restored to their original luster, as will wainscoting and box beam ceilings. Plans are to open on Memorial Day weekend 2007.

The rate for rooms in the historic lodge will likely run from $200 to $250 nightly, while the new building’s larger rooms, which will include fireplaces, porches and in-room spa tubs, will go for $400 and up.

“We have chosen the upscale approach, and our target market will be affluent couples in their 50s and 60s,” Sue Gillingham said.

Hospitality consultant Nancy Helsper, who is advising Trant Manor LLC, said she expects the guest roster will be “more on the leisure side than the business side.”

However, the property would be ideally suited for corporate retreats and individual business travelers, she said.

“There’s a need for that smaller, personalized environment,” said Helsper, a co-owner of the 12-room Heritage Park Inn in Old Town. “That’s a very specific guest who wants to be pampered on their business trip.”

In addition to an evening bed turndown and breakfast, guests may avail themselves of a concierge to help them plan activities and entertainment.

Internet advertising will be the 1906 Lodge’s main marketing tool.

“I think the Internet has given properties of all sizes an opportunity for marketing that five years ago they never had,” Helsper said. “The Internet has given lodging entrepreneurs a way to compete. You used to have to pay to be in guidebooks. Now you can put up a Web site. For me at my inn, 98 percent of customers find us on the Internet.”

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